Burning Bright
by Luke1
Summary: Sequel to Shadows Suit Me. Following seven years of drug abuse and severe depression after killing his father, Luke is beginning to get his life back on track. Now, he realizes that he has to understand Vader before he can truly let him go. To confront Vader means confronting the darkness in his own past, taking responsibility for his actions, and accepting his feelings for Leia.
1. Prologue

Introduction

Loving in truth, and fain that love in verse to show

That she, dear she might take some pleasure of my pain.

Pleasure might cause her read, reading make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain.

Oft turning other's leaves that thence might flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay

Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows

And all others seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,

Biting my traunt pen, beating myself for spite,

"Fool," said my muse to me, "Look into they heart and write."

--Philip Sydney

_I was nineteen when I wrote_ The Shadows Suit Me_. Now I am twenty-four. I have tried to write sequels, and to write other, separate novels. To write this other novel that is kinda a synthesis of _Shadows_ and something else I've been working on for years. To clean up _Shadows_ and turn it into a final draft._

_I'm now in graduate school. I have finals. I've been accused of being a terrible writer by my history professor. I should be working on the paper for her class, but my tormented soul, screaming for artistic expression, is insisting to me that if I write a sequel for _Shadows_ at long last, if I "Look into my heart and write," then my finals will be better written for the practice. And, more importantly, I've realized that every time I've tried to write a sequel, it's been…what I thought I should write. Not what I needed to write. Not what was in my heart._

_ I'm not too different from my Luke. At all. I don't have a crippling spice addiction (though you might be concerned by my level of alcohol consumption), I don't have children with my sister, I don't have a paranoid theory that my whole life I've just been used, and I don't even have a relationship that I'm confused about. But the scattered thoughts and emotions are mine. I get anxiety attacks and I have trouble, to put it gently, seeing past my own shortcomings. Maybe, at this point in my life, it's time to let some of that out again._

_ The sequel I started writing to _Shadows _a few years ago--ignore it. It had some merits, and there were things I liked about it, but it wasn't right._

_ I know, as I've said, that not too many were thrilled with the end of _Shadows_. It was supposed to give you an uneasy feeling, to make you say, "That's not going to work." My boyfriend at the time, upon reading the ending, told me, "I don't know if you're a great writer or a terrible one. Do you mean to pay with our emotions like that?" Yes, yes I do._

_I love you all for reading this. Thank you for your support._

_ --_The Author

_ PS: I know that "death sticks" are a tube of liquid. Anyone else think it's weird that those _Legacy_ comics came out not too long ofter I finished _Shadows_? In which a hardened, Luke-like character uses death sticks to avoid feeling the Force? I sense plagiarism here. Anyway, in my cannon they're staying what they always were, a harmful narcotic (that acts like heroin once it's in the system) that one smokes._

Burning Bright

Prologue

"You'll always be an addict."

I've heard that a million times. I know it. I know it with every aching cell in my body, every desperate thought in my mind. I know it every time I look at my children, at Leia, at the more-or-less harmless spice sticks I still smoke, the kind with all of the active chemical stripped out of them, leaving something that tastes like spice, and has a mild, caffeine-like kick, but is as much spice as a dead body is a person. I know it every time I wake up in the middle of the night and wish Leia were beside me. I know it when Anakin catches things that people drop before they can hit the ground. Too fast. And those big blue eyes. I don't answer, don't react at all. Don't look at her.

"No matter how long it's been since the last time you smoked a death stick."

I recoil a little at her use of the archaic term. How could she know anything about spice if she doesn't know that no one calls it that anymore? What is this, thirty years ago? I stubbornly don't answer, just stare grimly at the spring rain falling on the window.

"Luke, are you listening?"

"Yeah," I grumble.

"You know, these sessions would be a lot more helpful if you'd contribute."

"I don't have anything to say."

I'm in my therapist's office, sitting on the couch that one traditionally, stereotypically lies on, if one buys into the cliche. The middle-aged human female across from me is paid, by Leia, and assigned, by the clinic where I completed rehab almost a year ago, to make my troubles her own. I can't wait to get out of here. Every one of our biweekly sessions is the same.

"What have you been up to since we last spoke?" she asks.

I sigh. Nothing this woman and I ever say to each other could possibly help me. "Nothing."

"You must have done something."

"I spent time with my kids. That's about it."

"Your sons?"

I nod.

"And _how_ old are they?"

I don't know how many times I've told her, and I can tell by her emphasis on the word "how" that she's aware she has been told. "Ben's eleven and Anakin is eight."

"And how do you feel when you spend time with them?"

This is all rehearsed bantha shit. She is trained to ask certain questions, and she seems to ask them in the same order, and not to listen very carefully to the answers. "Um…I dunno," I shift my feet in my black leather boots, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. "I'm happy to be with them, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I mean…they're the most important thing in my life."

"That's good. I think they're a very positive influence on you. Did they play a hand in your decision to go to rehabilitation?"

I nod. I would never have wanted to put myself through that if it weren't for their innocence. But as it was, I couldn't let them down.

"You were out of their lives for seven years. Do you think that effects your relationship with them now?"

What? In her repetition of her rehearsed steps, she's asked me a very obvious and idiotic question. "Um…yeah. Of course it does."

"How so?"

I guess that's less obvious. "Ben…I think he doesn't really trust me. He used to, when I first came back, but…." I shake my head helplessly.

"Why do you think he doesn't trust you?"

I laugh helplessly, wishing I could smoke in here. "He's too fucking smart. Like his mom."

"What do you mean?"

"I think he knows that there were some very serious reasons I left. Beyond a simple break-up or whatever."

"Have you ever thought about telling Ben you're not his biological father?"

Without missing a beat, I shake my head insistently. "No."

"Why's that?"

"I…I _promised_ Leia," I say, my voice a little edgier than I'd meant for it to be.

"And you feel obligated to keep that promise, even though you two aren't getting along?"

"Yeah."

"Is that the only thing keeping you from telling him?"

I look back out the window at the grey Coruscant sky. Full of traffic. "No…."

"Why else?"

"Well…Vader's my father, too."

"And how does that change the situation for you?"

"I guess I don't want Ben to turn out…you know. Like me."

"But Vader was Leia's father, too. Is she like you?"

I shrug. "In some ways."

"Not all."

"She's not a drug addict."

"You weren't always."

Why point that out? Does that help me, somehow? "No, I was alright. Before."

"So what do you think changed, inside of you, that made you not alright anymore?"

Isn't that your job? To figure that out? To make me better? "I guess it was when I realized how much of my life was…."

I pause too long, and she coaxes me. "What?"

"Part of the Jedi's plans for taking down my father. It was my whole life. I started feeling like every single thing I did was planned out by them when I was born. I was just being used. It was my whole reason for existing. But they didn't have the same expectation of Leia--she was too high profile, being adopted into House Organa, and she was useful in her role as a politician. I was really only worth anything as a lure for Vader." I stop. I've never talked that much in here before. I decide it's because I'm just venting. I guess that's one use for a therapist.

"But, Luke--you did so much for the Alliance. Surely, not everything you did in that role can have been part of their plans."

I shrug in frustration. "Can I smoke in here?" I ask.

"You know you can't."

I sigh. "I…I don't know," I try to answer her question. "Probably not. I guess they can't have known about the Death Star when I was born." Or could they have? I suppress a shudder.

"So that's something you achieved because you chose to."

"I didn't choose it."

She furrows her brow at me.

"I had to do it. I didn't have a choice."

"You did have a choice."

I shake my head. The boy hero in me wants to say something noble about how I couldn't allow the Death Star to exist, to let other planets be lost the way Alderaan was, to let the Empire continue to tighten its grip on the Galaxy. But I just repeat stubbornly, "I didn't."

"Why?"

"Because they were going to destroy Yavin IV."

"And the Alliance?"

"And…Leia. She was on Yavin."

"You did it for Leia? To save her life?"

I sigh again, sitting back on the couch. I feel Leia's presence burning brightly less than a kilometer away, sitting in her office, doing whatever she does. I don't reach for her, but I don't have to. She's always there. Always. I can't block her out anymore. I'm too obnoxiously, painfully sober all the time.

I think of an eighteen-year-old princess with eyes like black fire.

"Everything I did was for Leia."


	2. Thirty

I guess my birthday's tomorrow. Thirty. It's awful. Now, not only do I feel like I'm old, I actually am old. Of course, there's no way this birthday is going to escape unnoticed. I'm sure Han and/or Leia and/or the kids will find some way to embarrass me. They'll probably try to make me have fun. Or maybe they won't. Maybe, like last year, they'll let me suffer in peace. Then, last year I was still in rehab, and all I really got for my birthday was a quiet visit from Han and Leia and the kids. I was still a mess, still sick as hell. I was having trouble eating, trouble sleeping, trouble talking coherently without getting pissed off. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, looking out the window and chain-smoking legal spice. Whenever Leia came to visit me, she and I exchanged fond, nervous smiles, and very few words. Han and I were better able to talk. The boys didn't really understand what was going on. Not really. They brought me artwork from school, and Ben made me a model X-wing, and never asked me any questions. Sometimes Leia brought Mylia, tiny and amazing, and let me hold her if I felt well enough. I love babies. They have no idea who you are. They don't care. If they're used to you, if their parents are okay with you, babies love you.

My can walk now. She slinks around the apartment, holding on to furniture when she can, her huge brown eyes excitedly taking in everything. She can say "Ma" and "Da" and "Lu," "Ben"--almost--and "Ani." Anakin hates being called that, but My is not going to be able to manage his whole name for at least another few months. She can also say "No!" And she does. A lot.

I go to see Leia after therapy. It's what I'm supposed to do. I think it's her way of making sure I'm actually going and not just fucking off for an hour. My throat tightens as I open her office door. Somehow, I'm still always nervous to see her.

The baby's there with her, and she points at me excitedly from the floor in front of Leia's desk when I walk in. I smile at her, genuinely. Mylia is one of the only things that can actually make me smile like that anymore. I scoop her up with uncharacteristic energy. She laughs her ridiculous fourteen-month-old laugh, and I kiss her cheek. Leia's talking to someone on a video screen. I quietly sit on the floor with the baby in my lap, singing to her softly enough that it's not going to disturb Leia, and she laughs when I tickle her at the end of each verse.

Leia ends her call, sighing. She pushes a tendril of brown hair off of her forehead, smiling down at me and the baby. "How was therapy?" she asks. Making sure I went. I used to skip it a lot.

"I dunno," I grumble. "Same."

"I know you don't think it's helping, but--"

"I know it's good for me to talk about things," I admit. "And this is probably the only way I would."

She nods. Gods know we don't talk. At all.

"You smell like smoke," she complains.

"I usually do." The baby squirms out of my arms and uses the chair beside us as a railing to walk to her stuffed animals on the floor. "Are you surprised?"

"It just bothers me that I wouldn't know if you happened to smell like hard spice. They smell the same to me."

Bothered by the fact that she doesn't trust me, I simply say, "If I was high, the whites of my eyes would be bloodshot. You'd be able to tell."

"I couldn't tell last year when you were and when you weren't."

"I was very used to hiding it." I sigh and rise, sit on Leia's desk before her, gazing at her imploringly. "I'm fine. You don't have to worry every second. I've been clean since last spring."

"I know."

"And that's not going to change. I have too much to lose."

She smiles softly. "I'm glad you see it that way."

It's not easy, I think. Sometimes, I'd rather get spiced one more time then ever see her, or Han, or the kids again. I'd rather get spiced than breathe another breath, or wake up in the morning. Right now, I can think of a lot I'd trade just to feel like that for a moment. The rush. The warm, quiet, explosive euphoria. The blank mind. But I've learned not to listen to it. For now, I muse.

Leia's thirtieth birthday was a few days ago. Of course, one or both of our birthdays has to be wrong--we must have the same birthday. But neither of us are interested in changing the day we celebrate--or don't--or in acknowledging that we even have the possibility. She took the milestone with much more grace than I, saying that she'd lived her twenties more fully than most, and she was glad to move on. She doesn't really look thirty. She doesn't have any grey hairs yet, and the lines around her eyes do nothing to detract from her beauty. She never lost all the weight from her pregnancy with Mylia, but she wears it well, carries it in the right places. I usually try not to notice. It would help me not notice if she didn't wear her gowns so tight around the midsection. But I guess that's the fashion. It's also the fashion to wear long hair loose, but Leia still wears her hair in creative plaits, sometimes on top of her head, sometimes hanging off. I think that it makes her feel like Alderaan is still there, to follow their customs. It means that I can only see her hair down in my mind's eye, and I do. Frequently.

I'm sure I look at least thirty, but it's hard to judge for yourself how old you look. I'm still too thin; I have bad dark circles under my eyes. I don't have grey hairs, either, but I have more lines than Leia. I know I have physical characteristics that make me look "boyish" or something. I've been told, at least. My eyes are pretty big. My smile, when I smile, is apparently youthful. But I don't know. To me, I look like a spicer. Still. It would probably help if I didn't wear this black leather jacket every day. Or if I ate something.

She sees me gazing at her, and looks away. "You really don't want to do _anything_ tomorrow?" she asks, stacking some datapads.

"Nothing," I insist.

"Not even dinner?"

I sigh. "Yeah. The president and her ex-husband, rumored to be a recovering spice addict, and their children celebrate a birthday at a Coruscant restaurant. No. If we do dinner, I want it to be at home."

"The public doesn't know you're a recovering addict."

"It's only a matter of time."

"You worry about _everything_."

"Everything is pretty worrisome."

She sighs and shakes her head. "Fine. I'll call the palace caterers. You want a cake?" she asks, knowing the answer is no.

"The boys will," I admit.

"They'd be disappointed if there were no cake."

"Better get one, then."

I sense the boys coming down the hall towards Leia's office, and when they get closer, I sense Han as well. I turn and look at the door right before it opens. If Leia notices my unusual display of Jedi abilities, she doesn't comment on it. "Dad!" Anakin shouts excitedly when he sees me, trowing his school satchel on the couch by the door and running to the desk, his pale eyes twinkling excitedly. "Dad, guess what?"

"Don't ruin the surprise, kiddo," Han warns, ruffling his hair.

Han and I exchange a look in greeting, and I say, "What surprise? Is this going to be something horrible and embarrassing and birthday-ish?"

He furrows his brow. "Not any of those things, really. I think. You might actually like it. Or hate it. One of those."

"It's really great, Dad," says Ben from the couch.

"Know what the best part is?" asks Han.

Something I'm going to resent? I bite. "What?"

"You don't gotta wait for tomorrow to find out what it is!" He flashes me a huge grin, and I shake my head.

"Wonderful," I grumble.


	3. Present

"Where are we going?" I ask. We've left Leia in her office to work herself to death--her choice, really, and since it's the way she seems to get her rocks off, who am I to interfere?--and gotten in a turbolift to the bottom of the palace. It takes a good five minutes to travel that far down. State-of-the-art technology or no, any faster would be uncomfortable for the occupants. The palace is very tall. "Aren't the hangers down here?"

"Storage hangers, yeah," says Han. "Forgot you've never been down here. Ten years ago, you'd've _lived_ down here."

"I grew up."

"If that's what you wanna call it, sure."

"So…why are we torturing me today _and_ tomorrow?"

"Because today is when Wedge had time."

"What does Wedge have to do with this?"

Han just grins.

Fantastic.

"Dad, can I ride on your back?" asks Anakin.

"When we get off the lift. Hey, remember what I taught you, about when the lift slows down?"

"You weigh more!"

"That's right. Like we're on the _Falcon_, and the gravity isn't working very well. You remember what the best way to tell how heavy you're feeling is?"

"Jump," Ben says, mischievous grin on his face.

"Okay, get ready." Ben and Anakin and I all crouch, ready to jump. The lift starts to slow its decent, and our inertia tries to keep us at its old speed despite the floor in our way. We all jump, finding the floor far closer than we expected when we land, having only fallen a few inches for the much greater distance we rose, relative to the floor. The boys giggle, ecstatic. I smile at Han, who shakes his head. "You ten years old?" he asks me.

"Sometimes."

He keeps shaking his head like he's bothered, but I can see the smile he's trying to hide. I know it gives him hope for me when he sees me act childish around the boys, when I'm able to get past all of the layers of war, depression, isolation, and substance abuse, and be a farm boy. For a minute. And then it's buried again.

The lift doors open, and Anakin holds me to my promise, tugging me down so he can climb on my back. "There's no way you weigh all that much more than him," Han says.

"I weigh twice what he does."

"You weigh fifty-three, fifty-four tops."

"Fifty-five"

"Sure."

I'm plain lying. I weigh fifty-three. But it's more than I weighed last year--still nowhere near what the medics want me to weigh. I'm trying. I really am.

I don't mind carrying Anakin. In a matter of months, he's going to either be too big or too embarrassed to be carried like this, so I want to play this game while we still can. I like feeling like a normal dad, though it's probably the last thing I am. Han does most of the taking care of the boys. I spend a lot of time with them, but Han's used to being their father, and I'm still not. And I'm an emotional wreck a lot of the time, and when I am, I try not to let the boys see me like that. Han's got a handle on it. And again, I'm really trying. Really.

"Alright," I say. "Where're we going?"

"Over here. It's the best birthday present ever, Dad! Really!"

I find Ben's enthusiasm worrying. We're in a storage hanger. And he's ecstatic. This is going to be bad. I sigh and follow him.

I see Wedge crossing an empty part of the massive, dimly lit hanger, coming towards us. He's the only one outside of my family--and my doctors, of course--who I have any semblance of a relationship with. I even told him about my spice problem, though I didn't tell him what encouraged it. He wasn't surprised, and I didn't expect him to be. I was clearly, visibly sick. I felt like I had to tell him if we were going to try to be friends. Not like it's not rocky and awkward, but we're working on it. We usually sit and talk while Tamin and the boys play. It feels nice, normal.

He's dressed in his flight suit. I'm not sure he ever takes it off. Alright, I know we make fun of him too much for it, but he deserves it. "Happy birthday, old man," he says with an obnoxious smirk when he gets close enough.

"You're two years older than me."

"Yeah, I know. But thirty just seems _older_ on you, you know?"

I roll my eyes.

"Where is it?" asks Han.

"Back here," says Wedge, turning. "I'm not sure you're gonna like it, honestly," he says lowly to me as I follow. "But I…do think you should have it."

I sigh.

When we stop at the far end of the storage hanger, among a bunch of old junk, there's an old snub fighter, dirty and scarred before us. "It's an X-wing," I say, unimpressed.

Han raises an eyebrow at me.

Then I see how many ships are painted on the side, the ones that the pilot took out. Way more than I've ever seen on any ship except one. And the first one in the line-up is a Death Star.

I don't know whether to smile or run and hide. "It's _my_ X-wing," murmur.

"Sure is," says Wedge.

I let Anakin slide to the floor, and approach the ship carefully. Of course, this isn't the one I was in when I destroyed the Death Star--I left that one at Bespin. But the new one that I receved when I rejoined the Alliance got painted with the Death Star anyway. I'd fought it, saying that it didn't matter, but Wedge had insisted. I remember him asking me if I remember how many TIE fighters had been commemorated on my old ship. I felt suddenly cold when I hadn't been able to remember. We decided it was upwards of a hundred; we painted a hundred and twenty. I think it should have been a lot more than that, but I liked the sound of Wedge's lower estimate better. I don't know what disturbs me more--the high estimate, or the fact that I honestly wasn't sure.

Even back then, I was beginning to feel guilty for the death and destruction I'd caused. At this point, I knew Vader was my father, but what I think had actually done it was years before, at the Yavin ceremony, when they read off the list of pilots we'd lost at the Death Star battle. I'd held back tears when they'd said Biggs' name, and I saw Wedge and the other pilots do the same for him and others I hadn't had the chance to know, and it suddenly occurred to me that the men in those TIE fighters up there…they had friends who'd miss them. Maybe parents, children, siblings. Then I thought of the Stormtroopers I'd shot on the Death Star. Then I thought of the Death Star, and I'd wanted to be sick. How many people were mourning today? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Because of me. But it didn't stop me. I fought on with the fury and ambition of youth and idealism. What else was I supposed to have done? Leave Leia?

"It still fly?" I ask.

"Hasn't since you last flew her," Wedge answers. "So I couldn't say."

"Why didn't you reassign it to someone else?"

"Because it's yours."

"I don't own it."

"Well…neither did the Alliance, legally."

I smile. "Yeah." If there's one part of fighting in the war that I still feel pretty good smiling about, it's stealing equipment from Imperial-run factories.

"Wanna take her up?" asks Wedge.

I turn suddenly. "Um…no. I mean, I'm so out of practice…."

"You never forget how to fly, Luke! Besides, if you're half as good as you used to be, you're still twice as good as the newest kid I got in Rogue Squadron."

"I haven't flown in eight years. Almost nine. And I've destroyed a lot of brain cells in the interim."

"Yeah, but you still know fancy words like _interim_, so your brain can't be that bad off," chimes in Han.

"Please, Dad," whines Ben, coming up and taking my hand. "Please fly it! I want you to tell me all about it."

How about I just let it sit here, and _you_ can fly it when you're old enough, I think. "I'd need an astromech."

"We have a bunch," says Wedge.

"But…I've never flown without Artoo."

"I could have him sent down. I think he's up running paperwork around for Leia. She wouldn't mind," offers Han, taking out his comlink.

I take a deep breath, considering it. Then I let the breath out. "No," I say. "None of my excuses are going to convince you, so I'm just going to say it. No."

Ben pouts.

Anakin goes and stands under the fighter, staring up at it with his bright eyes, looking excited and inspired. "You flew this in the war, Dad? Really?"

"Yeah," I reply.

He looks so much like me. His hair even has the same waves in it, that cause it to curl away from the nape of his neck. He has the same dimples when he smiles. He turns back to face us, a smirk on his face. "It's kinda a piece of junk."

I have to fight to not double over laughing. Han doesn't bother trying not to. Wedge, of course, doesn't get it. "Piece of junk?" asks Wedge. "Son, if it weren't for the speed and maneuverability of the X-wing, we wouldn't have won the war!"

"But it's all dirty and old. It's older than me, I bet."

"You're eight."

Anakin doesn't seem to understand why that matters, but he doesn't comment further on it.

"It's not the shiniest and prettiest ship on the outside," says Wedge. "But you know why?"

Anakin shakes his head.

"Because when we were the Rebel Alliance, we didn't have any money. We stole everything we had from the Empire, and we used it until it feel apart."

"And then we put it back together with engine tape and kept using it," I offer.

Wedge laughs. "Yeah. And so this X-wing was just the best we could do, and we never minded much what it looked like. What matters is what it can _do_."

The boy seems impressed, and smiles. "How fast is it?"

"Not as fast as the _Falcon_, but fast enough. Gave TIE fighters more than a run for their money."

His smile widens, and I can see the gap where he lost another tooth a few days ago. "I wish I could fly it!"

The tone of his voice and the look on his face are so familiar. I remember being eleven or twelve, and being taken to Beggar's Canyon for the first time with Biggs, five years older than me. He was my best friend, though he could easily have become the best friend of someone closer to his age, less awkward, maybe someone who lived closer in. But there I was, standing on the canyon floor with him and Fixer as they negotiated the terms of their first race. "Leave the kid here," Fixer'd said. "His aunt will kill you if he gets hurt. 'Sides, he'll probably freak out the whole time and screw you up."

Biggs had listened to him at first, but seen the look in my eyes as he got ready to board his T-16, and paused. "You wanna come?"

"Fixer said--"

"I know. I don't care. Come on."

I hadn't freaked out. I sat silently in the second seat, my heart racing, feeling the trill of high-speed flight wash over me for the first time, knowing then and there that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. We lost the race, but I didn't care. "I wish I could fly!" I'd exclaimed when we emerged from the craft.

The boy before me looks and is far more like that twelve-year-old farm boy than I am. My short hair and black clothing, the circles under my eyes…they have no place in connection with the dreams and enthusiasm I once embodied.

I walk back up to the ship, running my hand along the bottom of a wing. My son comes to stand excitedly beside me, and I smooth his hair.

I need one more nudge, though, and Wedge seems to know, and to know exactly what it is that will help. "I'll race you."

In the old days, I never could turn down a race. Both of the boys grin excitedly up at me. "You're gonna lose," I inform him, trying not to smile.


	4. Real Hero

Trembling as I pull on a flight suit, having very serious second and third thoughts, I pause before going back out to the hanger. I can't do this, I think. I'm not healthy enough to take the G-forces. I smoke a stick, leaning up against the wall in Rogue Squadron's locker room, trying not to look at my reflection in the mirror to my right. It looks wrong. The smallest size of flight suit is too big. I look like I stole it. And like I stole the X-wing along with it, and I'm gonna sell it to buy drugs. I don't belong in one of these things.

When I finish smoking, I realize that they'll be waiting for me, so I sigh and go find my fighter where they've moved it to be beside Wedge's. I wish the techs who brought it out of storage weren't gaping at me. I wish no one knew who I was, or cared. The legendary founder of Rogue Squadron flies again. Fuck. "Ready?" asks Wedge, smiling brightly at me in my flight suit.

"I guess," I grumble.

Artoo chirps in greeting as I climb the ladder. All I can manage in reply is an expression half-way between a smile of acknowledgment and a sigh as I look away. My muscles remember how to slide into the seat. It's all still second nature, buckling my harness, pulling on my helmet, reaching for the switch to close the canopy. My finger hesitates on the switch, refusing to hit it. Wait….

"I can't," I whisper.

Artoo asks what is wrong, or maybe what I said. I'm not sure. I'm not looking at the display. I sit back against the seat, my hand over my eyes, forcing back the anxiety clenching my lungs. What am I doing in this cockpit? What the fuck am I doing? That Luke Skywalker died at Endor, I repeat to myself as I have so many times. The Luke Skywalker who people idolize and tell stories about never really existed, but any semblance of that hero who lived in the boy I was, that's all gone. I have no business playing star fighter.

The only thing keeping me in my seat is the thought of trying to explain why I'm getting out. How am I supposed to go through with this? I'm in no physical or metal state to do something so dangerous, and Han and Wedge should have the presence of mind to realize that. What if I crash? What if I hurt someone?

Sometimes when I have bad anxiety, I almost reach into the pocket where I used to keep the spice box, though I know there's nothing there. It's just such a pervasive habit. I don't even begin to make the move, I just have a part of my brain saying, "There's spice in your pocket, so everything is going to be okay." As long as I get a fix, everything is going to be okay. Everything else can just go to hell. I'll be high out of my mind. The rest of the galaxy won't even exist anymore. Nothing to bother me, nothing to worry me, nothing to judge me. Just…quiet. Calm. Warmth.

And I'll never feel that again, because I decided that my sons were more important than being comfortable. Or maybe I finally recognized that spice only made me more comfortable when I was high, and the rest of the time it made me far, far less comfortable than if I had never used it in the first place. I force myself to remember how much the withdrawal hurt, and ask myself to reconsider what I hate less-being sober, or being in pain.

"You okay, Luke?" comes Wedge's voice over the com.

I sigh. "Um…I dunno. I don't think I can do this, Wedge."

"Then I win by default."

I smile in spite of myself. "Oh, fuck you, Wedge."

He laughs, because he can hear my smile. "Don't let me win."

"You're a terrible person." I hit the starter and close the canopy. I guess I'm doing this. I'm completely insane-there's no way this is going to end well. Well, it's not like I was having a great time living. At least if I die this way, I tried. I guess. "So…were are we even going?"

"I'm sending you the coordinates. That's on the equator. We start there, race around the equator westward at an elevation of three hundred and fifty kilometers, hit those coordinates again, and the first one back in his spot in the hanger wins. Deal?"

"Should have thought of something more interesting."

"This is Coruscant, Luke. There's plenty of obstacles up there to avoid."

Oh, good. Lots of passenger vehicles for me to crash into and cause more deaths. If I survive, maybe I can paint a starcruiser on what's left of my X-wing, next to my TIEs.

I shake my head. Just fucking do this, and get it over with. "Ready when you are, General."

"We start when Han hits the emergency lights above the doors."

"Those are for emergencies," I mutter.

But when I see that light….

It is _on._

My hands know where they're supposed to be. My body knows how to brace itself against the strain. I can feel the right moments to make the smallest adjustments to my path. I accelerate at breakneck speed out the hanger doors, Artoo screaming from his socket.

When I lift off at a ninety-degree angle out the doors, my nose to the sky, Imperial City falling away behind me, the G-forces giving me no option but to settle into my seat, something in me relaxes even as my heart pounds. My mind goes so blank I almost forget what I'm doing. In a good way. A beautiful way. The sky above me grows darker. The air screeching against the canopy gets quieter though I'm speeding up. And then the atmosphere is gone, and space is huge and black and quiet, and I can't feel the gravity anymore. I'm doing twice what I was a moment ago, but it feels gentle as I rocket to Wedge's coordinates.

Wedge. Right. This is a race.

I think I might be able to see him out of the corner of my eye, and I'm sure I see him as a blue blip on the display. I'm ahead, but barely. And he might be giving me that little bit to get my confidence up. He'd better not let me win. Well, the harder I work, the less occasion he has to pity me, right? I don't pause at the coordinates, but I hit them to the centimeter, then give it even more speed as I begin to trace the equator, Coruscant's sun ahead of me for now, making my viewport darken itself in response. There is a lot of traffic up here, but not so much I can't easily avoid it. The debris from battles, crashes, and abandoned craft is much more of a problem, as it tends not to follow regular paths, and there might be even more of that than there are actual ships. Someone should clean up here. I'll tell Leia. Seems like it shouldn't be that hard to get the Senate to agree to something like that.

Two pieces of debris come at me from different angles, and I have to do a perfectly timed roll to slip between them. They hit each other behind me, but after some sparks, go on their way. Wedge gets past them when they separate. I'm still in the lead.

I round the equator with a blank mind and open Force senses. I'm in such a zone that I barely notice the passage of time, barely notice that I'm above Imperial City again until I realize I have to start thinking about landing, start thinking about how I'm gonna win. Wedge is a few kilometers behind me still, which isn't much, but it's pretty solid at this point. I have it.

And with my wide-open mind, I start to feel the panic on the ship ahead of me even before I catch the distress call. It's a big passenger ship, a ferry to one of the near-by planets, maybe. Carrying a few thousand civilians, easy. Just people trying to do business on Coruscant, or come home from visiting their grandparents…normal things. And there's something wrong with their ship.

I catch the SOS and respond to it without thinking. "Passenger Ship Veneta, this is…." _Fuck. _"This is Rogue Leader," I lie, cringing. But what was I supposed to say? This is a civilian in an X-wing who's gonna help you for some reason? "What's the problem?" No doubt Wedge's heard me, but he doesn't chime in, just lets me use his call sign.

"This is Veneta. We've lost control and I'm afraid we'll crash since we're on the verge of the gravity well," says a tense male voice.

"Can you dock an X-wing? I'll take a look."

"We can dock your ship, Commander, but I don't think we have time for you to 'take a look,'" the voice says, sounding annoyed in his fear.

"So, what do you want me to do? Nothing? I can do nothing." I say with a sarcastic laugh.

He sighs. "Go ahead and dock," he says, and cuts the link.

I sigh in annoyance, wondering why I'm helping someone who's being this much of a jerk, but I dock anyway, saying, "Coming, Wedge?"

"Sure thing, _Rogue Leader,_" he jeers.

"Should I have told them who I was?"

"I'm not mad. I think it's funny."

"Shut up, Wedge."

A ship hand is there to show us and our droids to the bridge when we come in the airlock-the ship is too small to have proper docking bays-and we hurry on our way almost enough to wind a poor old junky like me. The captain's eyes flash when he sees me-it's a look I know well, and I know it means he thinks he recognizes me, but he doesn't know where from-but he doesn't say anything except to tell us what's been happening, and Wedge, Artoo and I get to work on the helm. It's nothing the techs here couldn't have handled, but I guess their anxiety had kept them from being able to logically figure out the source of the problem. I think we have it under control, almost fixed, when we all feel a sudden lurch and sinking feeling.

"We're going down!" someone shouts. I come out from under the helm console to see Coruscant filling the viewport as we nosedive for the planet.

A split second later, Wedge shouts, "Boss, we got it!"

I take the controls, my hands flying. I've never flown a ship this big. It doesn't matter. At first it's adrenaline, fear. Then it's peace. Knowledge. Certainty. I can save this ship, and mine and Wedge's lives. It takes everything I have and at the same time it's so natural. This is what I do.

The ship doesn't want to nose up. She doesn't want to nose up. And I push her and I push her and I push her, and I try everything I know. And then I push her just a little harder, and something tells me to roll starboard, just a little bit, so I do. I think there's a wind or something, but it can't be much because we're still so high in the atmosphere, but whatever it is, the minute roll helps her nose up, and we start to level, and then we start to climb. Still, the bridge crew holds a collective breath until we're out of the gravity well, in a stable orbit, and then I let go of the controls and slump over them with an exhausted sigh, and the crew cheers.

Wedge is the first to approach me and grabs me into a hug, smiling. "You still got it, boss." I give a short self-conscious laugh.

The captain shakes my hand and says, "Thank you, Commander…."

I don't answer, but I pretend it's because I'm too distracted by the others gathering around to thank me, all of them remembering to thank Wedge only after they fawn over me for a moment. I'm becoming incredibly uncomfortable, so I say softly to Wedge, "Look, we're done, let's go…."

"We have to call a real repair team up here."

"_They_ can do that."

"And I bet they'll want to celebrate with us. Let's stay."

He never could turn down a party. Won't be much fun for me since I can't drink and they're going to be asking me who I am all night. "Let's go. Please."

"You go."

"Fine."

A small, auburn-haired female ship hand, at least five years younger than I am, suddenly says, lighting up, "Are you Luke Skywalker?"

Fuck. Now I am never going to get out of here. I turn to Wedge, who shrugs, looking amused. I am far from amused. I'm going to have an anxiety attack. "I…."

"You are him! I almost didn't recognize you without bangs. I had your wanted poster in my room when I was a teenager!"

You and every other Alliance-sympathetic girl your age. "That's…great…."

"Thank you so much for helping us! I'm so glad you're still helping to save people. You know, that was why I liked you, besides…you know…your eyes…." She sheepishly blinks away from my gaze, realizing she's making me uncomfortable, and continues, "Because you weren't interested in destroying the Empire so much as you were just…obsessed with saving the Galaxy. Saving real people. I thought it was so inspiring. So proactive instead of, you know…like you were the opposite of the Empire. You were exactly what we needed in so many ways. You're a real hero."

I'll take that drink now.

Wedge elbows me. "Say something, hero."

I'm so nervous that I let myself slip back about eleven years. I blush. "I…I just do what I have to do," I reply boyishly, hearing the suggestion of my aggressively suppressed Tatooine lilt tugging at some vowels. I must sound like a complete hick, straight from the sand dunes. I manage not to cringe.

The girl is about one more word away from swooning. Seriously? She likes that? She likes a tongue-tied farm boy? I don't know what's worse-the fact that I'm acting like someone I'm not anymore who I never much liked, or the fact that, under the surface, I'm someone far, far more despicable than a back-planet nobody. Disgusted, I push through my adoring fans and make down the corridor for my X-wing, Wedge and Artoo in my wake. "Luke-" Wedge attempts one last time.

"I have to…." I murmur.

Before I know it, I'm flying again, making for the Palace hangars, just wanting to be safe at home. I don't want to talk about what happened, I don't want any praise, or any congratulations, or even questions. I want to be alone.

When I've landed, I open the canopy, but stay in my cockpit for some reason, unmoving. Not sulking. Not anything. Processing, I guess.

"Who won?" Han shouts up at me. "Something go wrong? You guys were gone a long time."

"I lost," I grumble.

"That's bantha shit," says Wedge, appearing beside Han, helmet under his arm. "He was ahead by a long stretch. And then he saved about two thousand people from burning up in the atmosphere or worse."

"You what?" Han frowns in my direction.

"Nothing," I say, rising. I climb wearily down the latter. "I don't want to talk about it."

"What happened?" he asks Wedge instead, and I make for the locker room quicker so I don't have to hear it. Wedge sounds like that girl as he's telling the story. He always was one of my biggest fans, I reflect wryly. I barely acknowledge the boys' questioning eyes as I walk past.


	5. Destruction

"I said no," I insist firmly, hoping he'll finally drop it.

"It'll be good for you," Han says, keying open the door to the apartment.

I fail to see how it will in any way be good for me. I spent about ten minutes in the locker room, chain smoking and staring at myself in that fucking flight suit, trying to breathe normally. Trying to stop freaking out and stop thinking about that girl's big dumb eyes. Her absurdly misplaced hero worship. Three or four years ago, before I stopped really talking to people all together and long before Han found me in that cantina, though I fought tooth and nail and went to great lengths not to be recognized, had a pretty little thing like her looked at me like that, I would have taken full advantage of the situation. I would have forced back my hatred of remembering the past with some spice and a few shots of whiskey, which she would have paid for, of course, and told her all about my life being the hero she dreamed of. And then I'd get laid, and a safe place to sleep, and a shower, and breakfast in the morning if I was hungry, and then I'd leave, and I'd probably never see her again. I did it a thousand times, when I was in this weird period were I was homeless and hanging around these chic clubs where lots of aristocratic spice users spent their money. I wore black leather and got into a lot of trouble. People took advantage of my vulnerability, but I took just as much advantage of them-their kindness, their money, their need to believe that I was a hero, or that I was naive and innocent. It worked really well. It was a terrible thing to do.

When I left the locker room, Han and Wedge were still talking, the boys looking eagerly on, Anakin smiling his huge missing-tooth smile. I immediately got a bad feeling.

"Wedge said that you totally transformed up there-"

"I ran on auto-pilot…."

"Kid, you got any idea what it means that _your_ 'auto-pilot' is to _save lives_?"

Leia's in the dining room, feeding Mylia some kind of mush with a tiny spoon. "What's going on?" she asks, looking up with huge dark eyes as we enter.

"Nothing," I insist again with a sigh, sitting in the chair beside her.

"Have you and the boys eaten yet?" she asks, only dropping the subject so she can be motherly.

"No. Kids, what do you want for dinner?"

They're not listening. Both of them run to their mother and start excitedly telling the story of mine and Wedge's adventure at the same time. When Ben's excited, he looks a little like me when I was his age. It might be the only time he looks like me, and then I remember that though he's only mine on paper and in my heart, we still share blood. Leia frowns, then sets down My's spoon and lays a calming hand on a shoulder of each boy. "I have no idea what you're saying. You have to speak one at a time."

So they try to. At the same time. Leia sighs and shuts her eyes, then smiles faintly.

My heart pounds for a moment, and I realize it's because of her beauty. And then I close my eyes and swallow and look away, and refuse to acknowledge it.

"Wedge wants him back in Rogue Squadron," Han says, louder and deeper than the boys, sitting to the other side of his daughter, resuming her feeding before her chubby fingers can figure out how to pick up the spoon themselves and make a huge mess.

"What?" asks Leia. The boys both grin excitedly and nod. I lean back in my chair and don't make eye contact with anyone.

"What did you say?" she asks, clearly hoping the answer is yes.

"I said no!" I say, standing. "I'm the _last_ person who should be flying with the Rogues!"

"Well…Wedge clearly doesn't think so."

I shake my head. "Wedge can't see past our friendship. And who I used to be."

"He said you were great up there," Han says soberly. "And I ain't even talkin' about that cruiser-I'm talkin' about your flying. Like it just came right back."

"Alright. So I have a natural talent. But aren't there some laws against…" I sigh, "Mental patients serving in the military?"

"You went to rehab, not a mental hospital, and you're making excuses."

"I have a diagnosed mental illness. Which I go to That makes me a mental patient."

"Luke, maybe it would be good for you," Leia says sincerely, not in that obnoxious helpful tone she uses when she's just trying to make me feel better. This is real. I listen. "Your depression is always worse when you're bored."

"I'm not bored," I insist. "I like being a stay at home dad."

Neither Han nor Leia looks the least bit convinced.

"What cruiser?" the latter asks the former. "Did something happen?"

Han nods slowly to express the significance of the answer.

"You know, I'm not hungry," I say, rising and stuffing my hands into my pockets. I really don't want to hear anyone talk about this anymore. "I…I'm gonna go for a walk."

"You're never hungry," grumbles Han.

Leia looks worried. There is always the possibility I'm running off to the underworld to by spice. But I think she realizes that if I'm doing that, there's no stopping me. It's all on me. "Are you okay, Luke?"

For a spilt second, I find her worry touching, and I almost stay. But I really can't stand to be around while they talk about this, and I know I have nothing more to say about it, so I leave.

I make right for the _Falcon_. I have no idea why. Sometimes, I've found, the _Falcon_ feels more like home than anywhere else ever would or could. I know the passcode and I lower the ramp, closing it behind me, turning on barely any lights and sitting in the darkness of a ship that once teamed with excitement. I can feel the echoes of our psychic and kinetic energy from Alliance battles still vibrating in its hull. It's comforting, somehow. Like flying in Rogue Squadron again might be? I laugh helplessly and shake my head.

I make the decision without actually thinking about it. I just think, Han has a bottle of whiskey in his cabin. I know he does because he always does. I find it, open it, and before I know it, before I realize what I'm doing, I'm lounging tipsily on Han's bed, my hand around the bottle neck, trying to stop thinking. Maybe Leia's right. Maybe I am bored. Maybe that was always part of the problem, that once I left the Alliance, I really had nothing worthwhile to do to keep my mind off my problems. I had jobs, sometimes, before my spice problem got too bad, but it was always something part-time and boring. Mechanic work, usually, that I could have done in my sleep. Maybe I got so screwed up because I didn't have much of a good reason not to, and I didn't have anything else to do, anyway. There was no one depending on me. I wasn't even depending on myself to keep sober. I let it happen because I had nothing to lose.

And that moment when I first took my X-wing out of the hangar, and I opened the throttle all the way with the nose aiming straight for space. That felt good. It felt really good. It felt so familiar, and natural, and…strangely peaceful. Right.

My admission bothers me, and I down some more whiskey, suddenly worrying what's going to happen when Han finds out I'm in here drinking. Because he will.

It's too late, anyway. I'll deal with it then, and I'm not about to stop now.

And that girl, who looked at me and saw Luke Skywalker. The Luke Skywalker with the mop of sun-bleached hair who…what did she say? That I was obsessed with saving real people. Well, I was. I was driven. I thought I could save every human, alien, animal alive, and that I should. And maybe when everything fell apart, it was partly that obsession and conviction that drove me so hard into depression, because I suddenly realized that not only could I not save anyone, but I was part of the problem to begin with.

My therapist would love to hear me say that.

"Alright, then," I murmur drunkenly to myself. "If I get all that, then what's keeping me from joining Rogue Squadron?"

I couldn't pass the physical, I reason. Though Wedge probably knows that, and is either going to look the other way while I don't take the physical, or do something horrible like hire someone to get me healthy.

And….

What happened today…that was embarrassing. At best. I never want to look into the eyes of a life I save again, never want their gratitude. But the actual act of saving someone…that was…that was fine….

That felt right, too.

The problem is, in Rouge Squadron, I'd end up killing at least as many people as I directly save.

Many would argue that by serving in the military, I'd be indirectly protecting and saving so many that the few I kill would be "worth it" or something. And that was something I told myself during the war. No, not "worth it." _Necessary_. I thought I didn't have a choice. Like when I was talking to my therapist today, and she asked why I destroyed the Death Star. _ I had to_. _I didn't have a choice._

And now I know better, I guess. But I seem to be able to do only one of two things: destroy the lives of others, quickly, or mine, slowly.

I look at the bottle in my hand, and resolutely replace the cork.


	6. Han

Author's note: I have a much longer chapter waiting to be published after this, so check back in a couple days. So far I've been setting it up. I promise it is about to get very interesting. :)

* * *

I feel the weight of him on the bed beside me before I realize I'd sensed him in my sleep. He's saying my name, and his voice is both soft and urgent, his hand rubbing my arm to wake me. "What?" I grumble. I was fast asleep and loving it. Sleeping so deeply….

Oh. Because I drank. I forgot.

Not that alcohol actually helps you sleep, it's just that…for me, I often have enough worrying thoughts to keep me up unless I have something helping.

Han sighs, then as soon as relief had replaced fear, the relief is replaced by anger. He levels a finger in my direction. "Don't _do _that to me!"

"Do what?"

"Kid, I fucking find you passed out with a bottle next to you…." He sounds as if-if he were prone to crying-he would be on the verge of tears.

"I didn't drink that much," I insist, and it's true. Maybe four shots' worth. I'd caught myself before it got too bad, before it was much to worry about.

"You're not supposed to drink at _all_!" He glares at me for a second, then grabs me tightly into his arms and holds me, and we lie there for a minute on his bed on the _Falcon_. My momentary bewilderment turns into appreciation, and I close my eyes as I rest my head on his shoulder. "Brings back real bad memories, alright?"

I suddenly understand that he had been relating it in his mind to finding me in my apartment last year, having drank and smoked all I could find and swallowed most of a bottle of cheap old-fashioned pain pills, waiting to die. "Han, I'm okay."

"You're _okay_? You drank alone in the dark. Luke, what happened today-it wasn't that big of a deal, alright? If Rogue fucking Squadron is gonna drive you back to this, then forget it. I ain't…." He bites off the rest of the sentence, and turns so he's staring at the ceiling, but his arms still cling protectively to me. I can just make out his stubborn frown in the light from the doorway.

"You're not what?"

"Losin' you. Kid, do what you gotta do. But promise me you're not gonna do this again."

"_You_ drink."

"I ain't you," he snaps. "I ain't gonna end up on the street 'cause I'd rather have another drink or a fix of any spice I can get than have food or a place to sleep."

"I wasn't like that anymore when you found me."

"Oh, 'course. You were doin' a lot better," he says sarcastically. "You were _always _high, Luke! An' the only reason you were 'better' than before is 'cause Leia passed the bill to double the veterans pension and so you had a fucking place to live!"

There's no reason to talk about this now, but I wish for a moment I hadn't told him so much about the time I'd been gone.

Most of the alcohol has left my system and I'm able to recognize that he's just doing this because he's worried sick. "Han, I'm alright. I had a setback. But I've been thinking, and I'm okay."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." Of course I'm not completely fine, but when have I ever been?

He turns his head to face me, his expression still angry. "I won't tell Leia, but you gotta…take this more seriously. Being sober."

Han, if I wasn't taking it seriously, nothing would ever have changed. Getting clean was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I nod. "I'm sorry I scared you." And I am. Very sorry. I don't know if I've ever seen him like this, except the night he's likening this to, the night he held my hand hoping I wouldn't die before the medics could get to my apartment. Well, and on Hoth, the night he saved me, and I drifted in and out of consciousness as he tried so hard to get me warm. He's always taken care of me. It's amazing how quickly that "I look out for just one person: me" went away whenever he's been afraid for my life.

"It ain't me you should worry about." He sighs. "You goin' to your shrink tomorrow?"

"I went today. And I'm going the day after tomorrow."

"Make sure you tell her about this."

She won't say anything helpful about it, but I promise anyway. "And, Han?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to tell Wedge yes."

He looks at me with a sudden sharpness, like I'd just told him I was going to jump off the Palace roof. "Luke…."

"I thought you wanted me to do it."

"I didn't know how much…it was fucking with you. I thought you were just whining. Luke, don't do it if it's gonna make problems."

"I think you were right before, when you said it would be good for me. Leia thinks I'm bored. I think I've been bored for a really long time." I nod. "It's a good idea. It will be hard, I know. But…it will help."

He shakes his head. "Only if the shrink gives her okay." He still doesn't seem so sure, but maybe he wants to believe that everything will be okay.

"Alright."

Han relaxes a bit. I snuggle into the nook of his shoulder, and he squeezes me. "I can stop drinking, if it'll make it easier for you," he says softly.

I'm touched. "It won't make a difference. But thanks."

"Yeah." He smooths my stubbly hair and rests his cheek on my head. "Kid?"

"Hmm?"

"Why do you keep your hair so short?"

I'm a little surprised he hadn't asked me before. I dreaded haircuts during the war and now I clip it down every week or two, to make sure…it doesn't get too…I don't know. "I have to," I say.

"Why?"

"I just do."

He doesn't answer.

"Why?" I ask. He knows I meant to ask why he had.

"No reason." He shrugs under my head. "Kinda miss it longer, I guess."

I feel myself blush, though I'm not sure why. I hardly ever blush anymore. I'm glad it's dark, and I'm not facing him, anyway. "I feel like I'd be lying to myself if I let it grow again."

"_Lying_ to yourself?"

"Yeah, I dunno."

"What do you feel so guilty for, Luke? You never did anything wrong."

I don't answer, just sigh and circle his waist with my arm.


	7. Medicine

Author's note: This is a really long chapter, and I thought about cutting a lot of it down, but I really like it, so I didn't. I guess there's a lot of extraneous dialogue, and if, you know, I had the rest of the story written, which I don't, then I might be able to come back to this chapter and figure out what I need to keep of it and what can go. But whatever-I like it, and this is supposed to be fun, right? So I hope it's not too much.

Also, I did some research on "death sticks," which are clearly different in canon than in my stories, but I decided to start using the term for canon death sticks' active ingredient, ixetal cilona, to talk about which kind of spice I mean specifically-I shorten it to ixetal. The drug hasn't changed, it's just that I'd been feeling like the word "spice" was kinda vague and cumbersome for awhile now. I realize that it's kinda late in the game to start using that word, and I'll still usually just refer to it as spice, but I think I like this so I'll keep doing it. If that's okay.

* * *

"Fifty-two-point-six," says the medic, entering it into her data pad.

I cringe. I'd thought it was more than that. "Are you sure?" I ask.

"Don't worry," she says. "The machine says that you have a high muscle density for your weight, so it's really not that bad."

"I guess I pick up my kids a lot," I murmur in explanation, though my mind is elsewhere. Not that bad. My usual doctors told me they wanted me between fifty-seven and sixty-eight.

She takes my height next. "One-point…seven." She shrugs. "Six-nine," she amends, and enters it. "I'd be much more worried about your weight if you weren't so slight. Before your substance problem, you were already very thin, weren't you?"

"Yeah."

"I can tell by your build. How old were you when you started using?"

"Twenty-three." I was twenty-five when ixetal cilona-my drug of choice, the hard sticks-started to be a real problem, but I was already on something or other most of the time by twenty-three.

"Do you know how much you weighed at twenty-two?"

"Um…fifty-eight. But I had fast metabolism. I was just a kid. I ate constantly."

"And you don't have an appetite now?"

"It's just stress."

"Mm-hm."

She asks me to hold my right palm to the reader, and I hesitate. After being asked why, I admit, reluctantly, that it's a prosthetic. Hardly anyone knows about that. I guess I'm embarrassed or something, or maybe it's just bad memories. She scrolls down her datapad and says, "Oh, I see. War injury?"

"Kind of."

"Left, then," she says, making an adjustment to the reader, then nodding to me.

It indicates several other stats. "Heart rate is good. Blood pressure is a little low, but within safe levels. Blood sugar is good for someone who claims to eat so little."

"I had breakfast today." More or less. I ate something, anyway.

She nods as she enters something "What are you so stressed about, Luke?"

I shrug. "I talk to my therapist about that stuff," I don't need yet another person in on my insanity and its causes.

"It says in the records from your therapists' office that you have severe depression, which seems to be compounded by intense anxiety attacks at times."

I nod.

"But she's not allowed to tell me what about. And it might help me okay your reenlistment if you explain to me."

I shake my head. "The anxiety is…circumstantial."

"Caused by stressful situations?"

"Yes."

"But you react more strongly than those around you?"

"It makes me want spice. Really bad." I could never put how badly into words.

"And the depression?"

"I guess I feel like…I failed."

"What?"

"I don't know." It's too complicated and personal to go into. "Everything."

She sighs and leans in closer. "I'm wondering if you might be misdiagnosed."

I frown. "I'm depressed. And I have anxiety attacks. How could I be….?"

"Do you find your moods to be unstable? I mean, do they change suddenly, even reverse from very good to very bad in the span of a few minutes?"

My therapist never asked me that. I nod.

"Do you get bored easily?"

"Yeah..."

"Do you lash out at those around you?"

I swallow. "I'm trying not to."

"In addition to the drugs, are you reckless with other areas of your life?"

I think of my impulsive heroics during the war. "Like what?"

"Money, sexual relationships, stealing….?"

"I don't know. Not the first one…well…except I used to spend all my money on spice and have nothing left. And…I guess when I first left my ex-wife, I was pretty…sexually reckless."

"Have you ever tried to kill yourself?"

I glance at my wrists and make sure my sleeves are covering my scars. I hesitate, trying to convince myself to lie and say no. But at some point in the past year, I decided that I need to be honest with doctors, even if I don't want to be, even if I don't think it will help. "Yes…."

"Was your overdose last year intentional?"

I nod, looking away.

"Was that the only time?"

"No," I breathe. "I overdosed…a few times. I don't know how intentional it was. I slit my wrists once."

"When was that?"

"Eight years ago."

"Before the drugs?"

"Yes."

"Why did you do it?"

"I dunno."

"Just a few more questions. Do you see things in extremes, black and white, good and bad?"

It's all I can do to not laugh at the irony. I shake my head to myself. "I can't tell you how right you are."

"Does that effect the way you see yourself?"

"It bothers me constantly. But…I have good reason..."

"So you see the reasons for your behavior as being out of your control? Brought on by something that happened to you or was done to you?"

"Absolutely."

"Does it bother you to be alone?"

"I like being alone, but I think I do better-emotionally-when I'm not."

She rises. "I think you have Borderline Personality Disorder. No, I'm sure of it."

I frown. I guess I don't like being told what's wrong with my head. It was so much easier when what was wrong was that I was angry and high. "What's that?"

"It's defined by unstable mood, dysfunctional and chaotic relationships, and impulsive risk-taking behaviors in areas that have potential for self-harm."

It doesn't matter what I "have." She's just pretending that my problems make me fit into a box so I'm easier for her to deal with. At the clinic they just thought I was depressed. That was their box. Either way, I feel the same. It doesn't matter.

"Did all those questions I asked you…did it all sound familiar?"

"Well, yeah…."

"It's very common for people with BPD to turn to spice. And to resent authority figures-like your therapist, who I gather from your tones, you don't like much. And to develop eating disorders-"

"I don't have an eating disorder!"

She smiles in that tight-lipped way that people smile when you said something ridiculous, and you'd know it if you only thought about it. I shut my mouth. I guess I never thought about it that way. In my head, people with eating disorders are obsessed with being thin to be attractive. I stopped eating because of the spice-one of the more consistent symptoms of ixetal addition is loss of appetite. I would literally forget to eat for days, just because I didn't feel hungry at all. And I guess now it's a combination of stress and habit. I'm not anorexic. But I guess not eating does make my eating habits disorderly. I sigh in annoyance.

She nods. "Has your therapist ever suggested using pharmaceuticals to help you break out of this?"

I recoil physically. "Drugs? I'm a _drug addict_-"

"So she hasn't said anything about it?"

"No, she has. But I said no, because I don't know how anyone could think that's a good idea. And she never brought it up again." I shrug. "I thought she agreed with me."

"Luke, the right prescription could balance out the brain chemistry that brought on your depression and made you turn to spice in the first place."

"Spice did that, too."

"Did it? Did you feel better? Or just high, or numb?"

I sigh. "Numb, mostly."

"And when that wore off?"

"Worse than before."

She nods. "See. And there's nothing wrong with using medication to treat a chemical imbalance. It's a medical condition just as much as…high blood pressure, for example."

Sounds like bantha shit, but I don't respond visibly or audibly.

"Would you be willing to try something?"

"You _really_ think I should?"

"I think it's worth a try. And you might find it makes your feelings make more sense again."

That _would_ be nice. I sigh. "Um…well, what would I be…?"

"It's a mild antidepressant. In pill form. You'd just take two every morning, and up to two more per day when and if you feel that you need it. Or just the two in the morning if that's enough. If you want to start on just one, to see if that's enough, you could do that, too."

"What does it do?"

"It causes your brain to produce higher levels of serotonin, as the most common cause of chemical depression is either that the brain's serotonin receptors are partially inactive, or that the brain doesn't produce enough."

"Shouldn't you check to see which one I have?"

"We'd prescribe the same medication either way."

How irresponsible. I could have something else wrong with me. And it's not as if we don't have the technology or money-the New Republic covers all of their veterans' medical costs-to do a proper investigation of my brain chemistry. Actually, I'm surprised they didn't check all that when I was in rehab, but I guess it's not really standard procedure. So this medic with whom I've been speaking for seven minutes thinks she knows what's wrong with my brain and that she can give me a pill that's going to fix it, and not the way ixetal did. "You think if I take it, I can be okay enough to serve in Rogue Squadron?"

She smiles awkwardly. "If depression, BPD, or PTSD were enough of a reason to be excluded from military service, we would have very few soldiers."

That's fucked up.

"But yes, I do suggest antidepressants."

"What if they're not helping, or they make me uncomfortable…can I stop taking them?"

"Of course! Well…slowly."

I laugh bitterly. "There's a withdrawal."

"A bit."

"Right." I sigh. "I…I don't think it's a good idea."

"Because there's a withdrawal?"

"Withdrawal means chemical dependency. I'm not doing it. I've worked too hard."

"I promise the pros outweigh the cons. Don't you want to feel normal? Like you used to?"

"Not that way."

"It's medication."

"That's a word. As far as I'm concerned, it's spice."

She sighs. "Alright. Well, here." She inserts and pulls out a card in the prescription slot on her medical datapad, and passes it to my hesitant hands. "Here's the prescription. You don't have to fill it. If you do, I want you to come see me half way through the pack, and let me know how it's going. If not…." She shrugs.

"Isn't there a more permanent fix for the serotonin thing?"

"There are some, but this is far less invasive, and it's entirely probable that your brian will eventually get better on its own. Very few people have depression for their entire lives. We just need to treat it in the meantime."

I eye the card uncomfortably. "So…that's it?"

"That's it."

"And…you think I'm okay?"

"I think you need to eat a lot more. Three or four times a day. And if you take the antidepressants, you should feel less anxious, which, according to you, will help your appetite. Other than that, I think you're fine."

I'm utterly bewildered. She just re-diagnosed me. And now I'm fine. "_Fine_?"

"Your intentions are to be clean and sober and turn your life around. You want to go back to an old job at which your talent is legendary. Despite your low weight, I don't find you to be inordinately unhealthy, physically. If you _lose _any weight, I might have to change my mind, but for now…you have my permission."

I want to argue with her. I want to tell her she's wrong, and that this can only end in disaster. I remember with conviction the times I'd had to be hospitalized from spice abuse and the way I'd behaved at the rehab clinic. I remember every time I got sick or injured during the war. I think about my therapist. In every case I can think of, in all those situations, it's me insisting I'm fine, and the medics or whoever telling me I'm not. And suddenly a medic is telling me I'm fine, and I know to my core she is wrong. "You don't think…."

"What?"

I shake my head. "That I'm too weak? Or crazy?"

"I don't think you're crazy."

I blink, looking at the card in my hands.

"Your therapist said it was alright as well. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."

There's a part of my brain that is being very insistent that both my therapist and the military medic are not doing their jobs properly. It's like when I was a kid in school, and I got good reports sent home to my aunt and uncle when I knew I'd drawn starships through class and done the bare minimum of actual work. I was relieved, though bewildered and concerned, because if my teachers didn't know how little I'd achieved, they really weren't very good teachers. So these two professionals think I'm fine, when I know I'm not. They're clearly not very good doctors.

But I'll take it.

"Thank you," I murmur, rising.

On the way home, I fill the prescription with the pharmacist in the Palace. I carry the pills home in their little cylindrical container, feeling them in my pocket, unable to think about anything else. When I get home, I sit alone in my room, holding the bottle, rolling it in my artificial right hand, thinking. Trying to convince myself to take one even though I'm bothered by the very idea on principle. Trying to convince myself to never take one though there's a part of me that promises that I'll feel better. In the end, I realize that if I did take one, it would be for the wrong reasons-it would be because I can't have ixetal but I _can_ have this-and I shove them into the back of a drawer. I wonder why I didn't just throw them away.

They're medicine.

There were a lot of things I took back in the day that were "medicine," too. Medicine misused is no different than spice. I somehow got my hands on tranquilizers, prescription pain killers, attention deficit drugs, sleeping pills, muscle relaxers…all kinds of stuff. Some that are now illegal in the New Republic, like amphetamines. Sometimes they were easier to get than ixetal, because people would find ways to get prescriptions and then sell them on the street. Easier than smuggling narcotics like ixetal cilona, glitterstim, even ryll, or what have you.

But I never took antidepressants. I don't know how they'll make me feel, or for that matter what any of the prescription drugs I've taken feel like in their actual prescribed dosage.

I take the pills back out of the drawer and open the container, let a few slide into my hand. I look at them for a long moment, then pour back in all but one. I hold it closer, reading the brand name on the pill, thinking about how barbaric it is that in this day and age, mind-altering drugs are still used to treat emotional imbalances. Just lazy. Or maybe greedy on the part of the drug manufacturers.

I can't buy into that. I can't willingly dull my mind now that I've broken free.

I put the pill back and cover the bottle up with a few shirts, slamming the drawer shut. I don't tell anyone I have them.


	8. Leia

Two days later, I'm walking into the apartment with a bundle of clothing under my arm that I'm wondering if I'll ever even look at, much less actually unfold. Wearing it sure isn't going to happen. I don't wear khaki. I'm not twenty years old.

"Luke?"

She knows it's me. I'd never believe for a second she can't sense me like I can sense her. We're too connected. I don't know if she knows she's Force sensitive. I guess I never talked to her about it. I don't answer, but I try to make it to my room to put the clothes somewhere before she can see them.

No luck, of course. In a moment, Leia's behind me, balancing Mylia on a hip, asking, "What's that?"

I sigh as I turn. "Um…it's…."

Her face lights up like a teenager's, and it's so rare that I see it do that anymore that I cherish it. "Is that a _uniform_?"

"Yeah," I breathe.

"They accepted your reenlistment?"

It was like pulling teeth. I don't know why I'd bothered. They'd understandably been a little hesitant, because of my sudden resignation eight years ago. They'd asked the reason, and out of stupidity, I hadn't thought of something to say before going to meet with the admiral, so I'd faltered, and said it was for "personal reasons." They'd asked if I could be any more specific, clearly indicating with their tone that I didn't have to be, if it began to trespass on my privacy. I said, "I was going through a divorce and I couldn't concentrate," or something. "I wouldn't have been any good, anyway. I would have just gotten myself killed."

They bought it. I guess. It felt pretty uncomfortable in there. But since I'd been an officer, and we were an illegal military at the time, my resignation was technically allowed, and if the military medics said I was fit or duty, then of course they'd let the Legendary Luke Skywalker back into Rogue Squadron.

"Yeah…they asked a lot of questions, but I guess I'm in."

"Luke, that's…." She hugs me with her free arm, nesting her head under my chin. I always freeze when we touch. I'm afraid I'll do something wrong. I have before-I'm not just being paranoid. I kissed her the night I tried to kill myself last year. I've wanted to since. I'd be lying if I said I don't think about it, so for that reason I try to avoid any physical contact. But I force myself to put one arm around her and rest it on her back, closing my eyes. She's just the right size to hold. Always was.

She pulls away a little, and we look at each other. Last year, after I overdosed, she told me she was still in love with me, too. I was surprised. She's so good at hiding it. I'm sure I radiate it in everything I do. But at times like these, I wonder what the nuances of her feelings are day to day-if right now, she feels awkward and uncomfortable but, under the surface…likes it…and then under that feels uncomfortable again and maybe a little sick. Like me. I think about what Han said, about how we wouldn't be hurting anyone, how no one would know. _We'd know_. I wonder if there is any way to make it so that I didn't care. If I could eventually become desensitized. I doubt it.

I reflect for the thousandth time that I should probably move out, now that I don't need to be taken care of or, in my opinion, watched anymore. I know the reason I stay is because she has sole custody of the boys. If I moved out, they'd have to stay here. Legally, they'd have to stay here all the time. Though I guess, maybe, we could get that changed.

She manages not to laugh as she says, "You're not going to _wear _it, are you?" It's a far cry from my usual all-black, pointedly severe and yet unkempt attire.

I furrow my brow. "Of course not."

"You're going to have to, sometimes." She shakes her head.

"See about that."

Pushing me towards my bedroom, she says, "Go try it on!"

"No, Leia-"

"Please?"

I can't say no when she asks me like that. Damnit, princess…. "Fine," I sigh, then add to myself, "Probably be too big."

The New Republic commander uniform looks almost just like the Alliance one. It's the same pale khaki. It has cargo pockets on the fronts on the pant legs, the sides of the arms, and two on the front of the jacket. But the leather and suede boots are gone and in their place is a pair of tailored brown leather boots. The pants are more fitted than they'd been eight years ago. The collar folds down instead of up. I'd told them I didn't want to carry a blaster, and they hadn't pressed it, as I supposed they see the baster to be largely ceremonial now that we're not at war. Han had been surprised when I told him that I hadn't held a blaster since Bespin. How did I protect myself when I lived on the streets and in the company of criminals? I'd answered rather cryptically, saying that there were other ways of making sure you got what you want.

It's not too big.

I'm surprised these are even made in my size, but, I reflect grimly, humans only have to be sixteen to join the New Republic military, and most boys of that age aren't finished growing. I force myself to look at my reflection, to be alright with the light color, the clean tailoring, the overall apparent morally uprightness of the whole thing. My first Alliance uniform was one of three changes of clothes I had for at least six months after Yavin, and as the two others were the semi-formal outfit I'd worn when I'd first been decorated, and the clothes I'd worn when I left Tatooine, I'd lived in the uniform. I remember first putting it on, looking at myself in the mirror, blue eyes huge, my hair falling in my eyes, so fucking proud of myself. And Leia'd been there, straightening it for me, telling me I looked handsome, and I saw myself turn bright red in the mirror. A princess. Liked me. A feisty, dark-eyed, tiny, strong, obnoxiously smart, gorgeously curvy, optimistic in light of all she'd faced, and incredibly perfect princess really liked me. Han stood in the corner as she fastened my jacket, laughing at my naive mixture of embarrassment and pride, and when he left the room for a moment, I'd grabbed Leia's wrists and kissed her. It was our first real, full-on-the-lips kiss. With the woman I didn't know yet was carrying the boy who wasn't mine but who was going to be our first son. The woman I was quickly falling so in love with I didn't know what to do with myself.

I was so fucking proud of what I'd done to deserve wearing that uniform. What I'd done. Killed a hundred thousand people.

What an idiot.

I ask myself again why I'm rejoining. I guess because I need to know I can do _something_ with my life. I probably won't even see battle. We're not at war. It's gonna be alright.

I think about the pills in my shirt drawer when my fingers tremble with the jacket clasps. Instead, I take a deep breath, hold it, and let it out. It's gonna be alright, I repeat to myself.

"Can I see?" asks Leia through the wall.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "Yeah," I manage.

The door whooshes open, and there's Leia, setting My down on my floor, who promptly lowers herself onto all fours to better scoot around. The former's eyes are round and overwhelmingly dark, and I can't read her facial expression as she regards me. "Here," she breathes after a slightly tense moment, moving to do the clasps I'd been unable to close.

But it's too intimate. It's too much like before. I grab her wrists to stop her, and she looks up into my eyes. For a minute I think I will kiss her. And I don't, and I'm glad, and I drop her wrists. I fumble with the closures again myself.

She has to know what just happened. Swallowing, she looks away. "You know, you're lucky," she says, clearly nervous, and this is _Leia_. "You don't look…all that much older."

If she doesn't see the lines around my eyes, that's not something I'm going to correct. "And you do?"

Sighing, she looks in my mirror beside me, straightening her bodice. "I'm never going to lose the weight from Mylia. I lost the weight from Ben and Anakin in a heartbeat. I didn't know seven years would make such a difference."

It's just a few kilos, and it certainly doesn't make her look any older. If anything, in a way, it makes her look younger. I remember thinking when I first saw her again last year that her face had rounded back out, which made her look more like she had before all of the stress and physical exhaustion of warfare. There was something childish about her face with its soft lines. I try to find a way to say that aloud without making her uncomfortable. "You're…I mean….it doesn't look _bad._" My voice sounds strained to my own ears.

She furrows her brow as she looks at me.

I sigh in frustration and decide to be blunt. "Leia, you're the most beautiful woman I've _ever seen_, and that isn't about to change because of some baby weight. Now…just leave me alone." I gather up Mylia and hand her off to her mother, then sit sullenly on my bed.

Looking dazed, Leia says my name like it's a question.

"I don't think you should touch me," I mutter by way of explanation, looking away.

"I'm sorry," she breathes, and it sounds like she means it. "Is there anything I-"

"Please, just go."

I see her lick her lips out of the corner of my eye. "You know…that I feel the same, don't you?"

My heart clenches. _We'd know_. But what if we didn't? What if we could just let ourselves feel this? What if we could try to live like a normal couple? _We'd know._

And she never shows it. She's too much the diplomat, and far too much the mother, the stable rock of our family, to ever betray anything that could create turmoil. If she feels the same, then…. "Then why is so much harder for me?"

She shakes her head helplessly. "Luke…you're…not really emotionally well..."

I laugh ironically. I don't know if I'm more amused by the understatement or by the fact that Leia feels the need to point it out. "I should really move out."

"No-"

"Leia, It's hard for me to be around you." I feel like I'm making sense for once. "Especially like this. I don't know. I thought…that it would help, to be around people who care about me. And it does…and I need you in my life, but…but _this_ is too hard…. It's too much like being married to you. It hurts."

"Luke, don't do this now."

I look up into her scared eyes, suddenly realizing we're acting like this is a break-up, but it's not-we're not together. Right? Or are we? Is that what this is, have we fallen so into old habits that we might as well just be together? We're still the boys' mom and dad, and though we've both changed so much, and though I'm not capable of handling a lot of the more logistical and emotionally charged aspects of our home life, we still function as a unit. I suppose, if the past eight years have proven anything to us, it's that we're incapable of really breaking up, that distance will never separate us. No matter how much I want it to. She'll always be mine. "I just think…I should look into it." And I hastily add, "But it doesn't have to be right now. Just…eventually."

When she leaves, I'm proud of myself for taking initiative. For realizing what was wrong and standing up for what I need. But I feel terrible for hurting her, and for wrecking our home. Stars know Leia's had enough turmoil in her home life. Wrecking our home. Our home was wrecked before it ever existed. It was never meant to be.

I sit on my balcony and chain smoke for about half an hour, making sure my uniform smells like me, I guess. And then I make my decision, and before I can second-guess myself, I take one of those pills.

I decide it was the right thing to do.


	9. Traitor

It used to be mine.

I was nineteen at the start. I had testosterone and adrenaline in my veins, I had Leia, and I had some half-baked, vague, but incredibly certain ideas that I was doing the right thing. A few weeks ago I'd been a farm boy, and suddenly they'd made me commander of Red Flight. I'd had no idea what I was doing but it didn't seem to matter. Idealism, raw talent, and the high morale following Yavin were a pretty lethal mixture. Over the next two years, Wedge and I put together what passed for the Alliance's elite fighter squadron, the Rogues. I had command until Hoth, and then everything started falling apart. I went to Degobah, completely AWOL-though the Alliance, disorganized and desperate for soldiers and pilots, would never, ever have called it that or even been particularly upset-not even bothering to tell Wedge where I was going or why. I thought he would think I was crazy. After that, I never officially flew with the Rogues again. Not until today.

Now it's Wedge's, and has been since I left. It always should have been his. He fits the job as if he invented fighter squadrons. When he asked me if I'd come back, he said I'd be subordinate to him, but regain my old rank within the military. Wedge is a general. Back in my day, we didn't have enough generals to put one in charge of a fighter squadron, but then, Rogue Squadron wasn't always the respected organization it now is. We used to just be a bunch of angry kids. How things change.

I don't even know any of the people in the squadron anymore. I'd looked over the list of names and ages, wondering how many of these boys were kids when Yavin happened, how many of them became pilots because they'd been inspired by the Alliance's victory. Because of me.

Persistent spice cravings nag at me all morning. Leia reminds me to eat, and I remind her for the thousandth time that she isn't my mother as I pour some caf. I feed the baby breakfast, hoping it will cheer me up. It doesn't enough. Giving up, I sigh, and go hide in my room with the door closed. I can't break down now. Not now.

Fine.

The bottle says to take two every morning, so I take one, again. And there's nothing wrong with it, I insist. When I took one the other evening, I slept better that night. I didn't have as many stressful dreams. I woke up not feeling tired. Maybe…maybe if I take a pill, I can act like a normal human being today, not fold under the admiring stares of children the same age I was when I first started flying, who hope they'll be the next me.

I look at the instructions on the bottle, and second-guess myself. It says take two, and I don't want to have the worst day of my life. So I take another one.

The thing with the pills is, I expect to feel them working. I expect to feel high, I guess. But I don't. I feel totally, disappointingly, deceptively normal, except bizarrely calm. I don't even really want to smoke, but I've heard of people quitting with the help of antidepressants before, so I'm not surprised. I put on my uniform. I look at myself, and I don't feel much at all. It's just clothes. Why do I insist on wearing black all the time, anyway? Who am I mourning?

I exchange a glance with Leia on my way out. "Are you okay?" she asks me. If I were to go off my own personal experience, I'd draw the conclusion that that was the must-uttered phrase in the Basic language.

"I think so," I say, and I don't know if it's the antidepressants or just wishful thinking. "Do I look…you know. Like a drug addict?" I finish with a slight ironic laugh.

"Of course not." She straightens my jacket. "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks…." I squeeze her hand, force a smile, and leave.

* * *

And I insist to myself that I can do this, and it's going to be okay, and I might even enjoy it. I stand up straight, and I take the lift to the hangar.

The pills must be working, because I actually smile at Wedge when I see him. "Look at you!" he says. "It's like just I went back in time!"

I feel like arguing, but I don't. I just blush slightly and turn to the congregated young men. The oldest can't be any more than twenty-five, the youngest can't be much more than seventeen, and they're all looking at me like they've seen a ghost. My smile doesn't completely fade, but it turns bashful and apprehensive. I guess that's better than an anxiety attack.

"Rogues, this is Commander Skywalker. Luke, this is-" and he lists all their names, and I don't even try to remember them all because I know I won't be able to.

I nod at them in greeting. They say things like, "Welcome back," "Honored, sir," and so on in chorus.

"So," Wedge says, "I thought you and the boys might like a little practice. We're gonna take them up and run some drills."

"Sounds good," I say softly. It beats having them stare at me. This might break the ice, get us functioning as a unit and put us on equal ground.

Artoo is waiting at my fighter, cheerful as ever, probably excited that we're going to be spending more time together. I reflect briefly that though he isn't technically, biologically alive, he does have feelings, and I should probably remember to be more sensitive to them. He gets bored running errands for Leia. Like a younger me, Artoo craves adventure. "Ready?" I ask once I'm settled in my cockpit.

Actually being able to read Artoo's responses is usually pretty funny. "I was manufactured ready," he says.

I laugh. This is what happens when you never wipe your droid's memory. "Alright."

"Squadron's yours, Luke," Wedge comes over the com.

"You sure?" I ask.

"Just for fun. For the kids." he explains.

I sigh. "Alright, if you say so." I switch to all channels. "Take 'em up. Wings report in upon arrival at the rendezvous. Sending coordinates."

It went well. Really well. Of course, they're Rogue Squadron, and in no way amateurs. Wedge talks about the newer ones' inaptitude as if he can barely stand them, but I'm pleasantly surprised with all of them. They all take orders well, they're all great shots, they work well as a team. They all congregate together once we're back groundside, helmets under their arms, talking, laughing, in good spirits. Several of them complement me on my leadership for the day. I accept it humbly. Wedge smiles at me and says softly, when no one else is listening, "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No, it was fine," I admit.

"You just fell right back into it. I knew you would. Now you can have my job and I can retire."

I smile. Wedge isn't anywhere near old enough to retire, but even if he were, he would hate to leave his job, and he knows it.

One of the boys, whose name I forgot already of course, a human in his late teens with brown hair and freckles on is nose, says to me, just a hint of that hero worship in his eyes, but an open and honest smile on his face, "Um…Commander, some of us-"

"Luke."

"What?"

"My name's Luke. I'd just rather not be called by a title."

His smile fades. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I interrupted you…?"

"Oh, right. So, some of us were going to go out tonight. I mean, if you're okay with us socializing and everything, we were wondering if…."

I hesitate, but tell myself it will be good for me. "Well, I don't drink, but…."

He laughs a bit nervously. "We won't hold it against you."

I take a deep breath. "Okay." Why not? My therapist said I need new friends, people in my life who weren't connected with the unpleasantness before, to give me perspective. "Sure."

He's absolutely delighted, especially after thinking he'd said something wrong earlier. I shouldn't have reacted so suddenly to that. I just don't like being called "Commander" by people who I'm supposed to establish a trust-based relationship with. I never have. The boy's smile shows dimples. "Okay. Great. Meet us at-" He stops suddenly, looking behind me. His smile fades.

I turn and see why. A group of five Palace security guards have entered the hangar and are striding towards us purposefully. All conversation stops. After a moment, one of the boys says, "What the hell?" Another says to his friend, "Man, did you rob a jewelry store or something?" But we're all aware that this is weird, and more or less quietly waiting to see what is going on. And I think the guards are looking at me, and I suddenly have a very bad feeling about this.

Then I notice one of the men in the back isn't a guard. It's Admiral Dodonna. He steps out into the front, marching straight up to me. "Luke…I'm sorry. I've always liked you; you're a nice boy. But I can't let this go."

I furrow my brow. "Can't let what go? Did I do something?"

Dodonna sighs and looks away, nodding at the guard bearing a captain's insignia. He steps forward, taking out a data pad. "Luke Skywalker, you're under arrest for treason."

"_Treason_?" I am many things, but I have never, ever been a traitor to the Alliance. Even after I became disenchanted with the Jedi, even after I realized what fighting in the war was doing to my soul, I wanted our side to win. I needed it for Leia and Ben and Anakin, and so that no one would ever, ever be subject to the evil will of my father again. "Does _Leia_ know about this?"

"Not yet. But she will. I'm sure she'll want to talk to you herself."

She'll probably dismember Dodonna when she finds out. "What did I supposedly do?"

Dodonna says lowly, sounding ashamed. "When we okayed your reenlistment, we noticed…the gaps in your service during the war. And we trusted you so we accepted you back in...but we _did_ have to look into it, Luke. We have…a _lot_ of evidence that you met with Vader on both occasions you were absent, and that you were present on the second Death Star during Endor. You're being court marshaled."

"That's ridiculous! Not only was I in no way aiding the Empire, we were an _illegal _military at the time. How can you-"

"But you _were _with Vader."

I suddenly realize I shouldn't say anything else without legal council. Or at least without talking to President Leia Organa. This is serious. Worse case scenario, I could be sentenced to execution. I should probably just cooperate. "I guess…there's nothing I can really say."

"It'd be better if you came of your own free will."

I nod.

I'm put in binders, Rogue Squadron staring in disbelief, watching their hero being led away for meeting with the man who, during their childhoods, had held the key to their worst fears. They don't know what to think. To me, it seems fitting.


	10. Plead Insanity

I'm more offended than afraid to die. I may be doing better, but I still have days when I think of reopening my wrists. Not seriously, but the compulsion is still there. And, true to my psychological profile, I'm aware of bizarre fantasies in which I get sick or die in an accident, absolving me of the responsibility of taking my own life, but having the same outcome. It's comforting.

So when I think of the charges, it's not the possible outcome that upsets me, but the accusations. I'm absolutely and utterly insulted. Beyond insulted. I'm pissed off and hurt so deeply I feel like punching the walls of my cell. But I don't. I sit on the bed and wish I had spice, and I clench my teeth, and I wait.

And I wonder if I'm so upset because I'm worried that they're, in some weird way they can't possibly be aware of, right.

Did I somehow give something away to Vader or the Emperor? Subconsciously? Was it my fault that Endor was a trap?

But we won, I argue to myself. Who cares if it was a set-up, and even if that was my fault? We won.

We could easily have lost. I'm still not sure exactly how we didn't. We probably should have, and if we had, I wouldn't have waited three months after the battle to slit my wrists. I would have killed myself on the Death Star, if I had been alive to see the defeat.

Deep down, I know the reason I feel so angry. I know the reason I think they're right. Because the real reason I went to see Vader, though it certainly wasn't to aid him, is a thousand times worse than the suspected reason. I'm Vader's son. I'm a part of him, body and soul. How would they react if they knew?

The worst part is, the only way to absolve myself of the allegations is by telling them the truth, and, if they believe me, which they might not, it will undoubtedly make the entire situation even more adverse, and it will bring my family into it.

Leia, president of the New Republic, would be the ex-wife of the son of Darth Vader. Even worse, my sons would be known to the whole Galaxy as the grandchildren of Darth Vader. I shut my eyes and try to convince myself not to feel nauseous.

The implications are horrifying. Not only would Leia's career likely be destroyed, not only would the boys be heartbroken themselves and stigmatized for the rest of their lives by those around them, but their very lives might be put in danger. And this is all my fault.

But what else am I supposed to do?

Leia and a lawyer come to see me. I'm feeling distant and resigned. I'm having trouble focusing on the conversation, and I finally ask, as Leia and the lawyer speak to each other, interrupting them, "You have to keep quiet about things that you don't think will help the case, right? I mean, you're defending me."

The Mon Calamari lawyer, who's name I didn't bother listening to, nods, blinking.

Leia wets her lips and looks worried. I ignore her.

"I did go to see Vader," I admit, sitting back, still not really looking at them. "I had to. It was the only way to win the war."

"Why's that?" asks the lawyer.

"He and the Emperor thought that…I don't know, that they could convince me to help them. They didn't, but I was endangering the fleet by being with it as long as they were looking for me. Besides, I had to just confront them and have it over with."

"I don't understand."

"I was trained as a Jedi during the war-"

"The Jedi are all dead."

"Yeah, now. But Vader and the Emperor were both…you know. Like Jedi. They could feel my presence."

She's clearly not following me, and I'm not sure how to explain it. So I blurt out, "Vader's my father." She's the third person I've ever told.

"Luke-!" gasps Leia.

I glance at her, then away.

"What?" asks the lawyer.

"I didn't know until he told me himself."

"How do you know he wasn't lying to manipulate you?"

"I know."

"So…let me get this straight…." attempts the bewildered lawyer.

"Luke," interrupts Leia, sitting beside me, "We _can't _use that."

"I know. The boys."

"_More _than that! There are already people in the government who are afraid of you, who think there's something weird about you. We can't give them more reason."

The lawyer folds her arms against her chest. "You see a psychiatrist, right?"

"Yeah…." I say.

"What's your diagnosis?"

I snort. "I don't even know anymore."

"Are you…delusional…?"

"What? No!" I rise. "No, nothing like that. I have a mood disorder, not psychosis."

She looks to Leia for confirmation. The latter hesitates. I hate it when she does that, chooses her words so carefully when talking about me. I'm not a ticking bomb. "He…is clinically depressed, and one doctor said he has an anxiety disorder and the other said he has…Borderline Personality Disorder. It and his spice addiction fueled one another, I think. He does…take things a little to extremes. But I don't think he made this up about Vader, no. It's true."

"I don't just…create events and facts that aren't real," I insist.

"Is he on medication?" she's asking Leia, not me. Probably doesn't trust my answers.

She shakes her head. I don't argue with her. I'm not sure why. "He refuses."

"I really think an insanity plead is your best bet," she offers.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because…that's not what happened."

"Commander, if you get up there and say you went to see Darth Vader because he's your father, they're going to think you're crazy, anyway."

"I think if they just understood the situation, it would clear my name. Besides, if we plead insanity, I'm going back to the clinic where I was after I overdosed, aren't I? Maybe forever."

"Well, It's better than execution, and you always have a chance of being 'cured,' and then released. And your kids can come see you."

"I don't like them being there," I grumble. I sigh and lean against the wall. I wish I had those pills in here. I wonder if the ones from this morning have worn off or if I'm just having a terrible, horrible day. I think about telling Leia so that she'll bring them to me, but I decide against it.

"I think she's right…." Leia says delicately, blinking her big dark eyes up at me.

I sigh. "I dunno, Leia."

"It wouldn't really be a lie, not really."

"I didn't do anything wrong!"

"I know! _I_ know that, Luke." She pauses, then rises and says pleasantly and diplomatically to the lawyer. "Could we have a moment alone, if you don't mind?"

"Of course." She leaves the cell.

When the door is closed, Leia closes her eyes tightly. "Luke, you know I try, against my nature sometimes, to be gentile with you, because I know you're fragile. And because I care about you. But you can be so…so _stubborn_!" She puts her hands on her hips. "You need to work with me. This is a big deal, and it doesn't only effect _you_!"

I clench my teeth and shake my head. "Leia, do whatever you want. I don't care. But I'm not going to lie about this. I don't have the energy."

"You're _actually_ going to get up in front of the High Court and tell them you went to see Vader because he was your father?"

"I guess."

"And what if they…what if they find out about…_me_?"

I laugh ironically and shake my head. "Leia…_how _would they do that?"

"They're going to dig to try to back up your claim-if they don't dismiss it as disturbed rantings from a drug-addled brain to begin with-and we don't know what they'll find. Have you done the research? There could be…birth certificates, medical records, all kinds of things we don't know about."

Maybe. "Did the Organas name you Leia?"

She shakes her head helplessly and shrugs.

"I'm sure they did. Why would Bail have kept your birth name, if you had one? Besides, Vader didn't know about you. I'm sure of that. If he didn't know, maybe no one else did, either. Maybe only…_she _did. And Obi-Wan. That there were two, I mean."

Leia sighs heavily.

"Princess," I say tenderly, stepping towards her. "I promise, they won't find out about you. That's the last thing I'd want."

She almost looks like she's going to agree, but then, looking genuinely hurt, she says, "You know, sometimes I think you're glad. That in your own screwed up way, you're proud of being his son. Like it gives you some sort of nobility. Or maybe not proud, maybe just happy that it gives you something to torture yourself over. Vader's dead, Luke. You killed him. When are you going to let him rest?"

She turns to go, and I call after her, "When he stops haunting me! I didn't ask for this!" She doesn't respond.

I make the decision as soon as she's gone, but like other drastic, insane things I've done in my life, I'm not really sure I'm going to do it until I find myself in the middle of it, no longer able to turn back.

Waiting for the guard to change, I meditate like Yoda taught me so many years ago, sensing the presence of everyone else in the cellblock. I wait for a moment when enough people are distracted, then I convince the door to unlock as if with its proper electronic key. I close it silently, and I slink down the corridor, confusing the minds of the few guards and would-be witnesses who remain, making sure they don't see me. It is almost too easy. Once out of the cell block, I take a strange path out of the building, lurking in alleys and obscure walkways, but I get straight home as soon as I can.

I have time. I just need to grab some things before I blast out of here.


	11. Stupid Plan

I apologize for how long I go between updates. Grad school is kicking my ass. I'm sure the infrequency of my additions detracts from your reading experience, and I will try to update more often.

* * *

The first time I saw Threepio following my prolonged absence was after Han and I got back from the resort. Leia had been purposefully keeping him away from me, worried, as is perfectly reasonable and in accordance with his usual behavior, that his impressive tactlessness-so strange for an etiquette droid, almost as if he had been programmed by an inexperienced and bumbling child, which is of course ridiculous-would make my assimilation back into the family that much more difficult. He would have questions. And advice. And absolutely not internal monologue. Leia had reasoned that it would be endlessly better if she waited for me to be sober and back to at least a reasonable level of health, and then talk to Threepio herself before letting him see me, tutoring him on what he should and shouldn't say. She informed me that he would be in the apartment upon mine and Han's return, and I had braced myself for impact.

I was exhausted from traveling and anxiety by the time we arrived at the door. Han reached to open it though I was closer. The knowledge that Leia and my boys were on the other side wasn't enough to push me onward, as I feared Threepio's scrutiny. Avoidance disorder, my therapists called it. I wasn't sure if it was part of the anxiety disorder or a separate thing, or two names for the same thing. I didn't understand why it had to be a disorder, and couldn't just be a combination of me being angry and scared and other people being too hard on me.

Threepio barely said two words to me until we were alone, just looked at me intently with eyes that could somehow look like they were staring at some times, though not at others. Finally, when Leia went to get the boys ready for bed, and Han was off somewhere, the droid approached me. "Master Luke," he had said, his voice adjusted to be somewhat quieter than is his wont, "I beg your pardon, as this is in no way my place, and I am certain it is decidedly improper for me to address you in such a manner at all, but I have decided that in this unique situation, honest communication is to be preferred above decorum."

I had sighed, and decided I'd just let him get it over with. "Go ahead."

"I would be lying beyond the level which diplomacy permits were I to say that I held your behavior of the last seven years in high esteem."

"Threepio…it's not as if I'm proud of it-"

"I should hope not. Mistress Leia was not well after your leaving, especially considering her delicate condition at the time."

"You're not telling me anything I don't know."

"Pardon me, Master Luke, but unless you would absolutely prefer that I stop talking, I have not finished."

I had rolled my eyes and nodded, allowing him to continue.

"Though less deplorable than your treatment of Her Highness and your offspring, I find this business about ixetal cilona to be entirely outside of my expectations of and experience with you, and completely, utterly distasteful-besides dangerous, a point of which you are no doubt aware."

"I'm well aware. Are you finished, now?"

"I am not. I only wish to qualify my last two points. I would have not mentioned them otherwise. What I wish to say, Master Luke, is that if Mistress Leia and Captain Solo, as well as young Masters Ben and Anakin, see fit to forgive you and allow you a chance to redeem yourself, then my having a divergent opinion is not only useless, but may, in fact, prove counterproductive to their aims. I am genuinely very happy to see you recovered from the…incident, as well as no longer under the influence of any narcotics. Rest assured that my happiness results from a strong wish for your wellbeing."

Why did it sound conditional? "But…?"

"_But_, Master Luke, you must be aware that if I ever suspect you of any other illegal or immoral activities, do not doubt that I will notify Mistress Leia, was well as the proper authorities, if necessary. If I must choose the safety and wellbeing of the children over keeping you from getting into trouble, I will do so-every time."

I'd been taken aback for a while, wondering how Threepio's programming could possibly rationalize questions of legality over his loyalty to his master. I assume my absence and his years of service to Leia and the kids in my stead had overridden any algorithms requiring his obedience to me. Still, during the war, Threepio committed many illegal acts I asked him to do in the name of revolution, but I guess I never asked him to do anything that would endanger me or my kids. I understand his logic without at all appreciating his behavior. Our relationship had been, since that day, nearly nonexistent. He keeps watch out of the corner of his eye, and I avoid him. We don't talk much.

As I make for the apartment, my heart is pounding and I'm not thinking about much besides getting in there and getting out. I'm terrified of being caught, but at the same time, in spite of myself, I feel endorphins coursing through my system. This is fun? I guess my natural inclination towards the dangerous and the exciting is still alive deep down, somewhere, even as my habitual anxiety kicks in. All I can think about is swallowing two more of those pills, then stuffing some things into a small bag, and then sneaking to my X-wing before I can get caught. I'll worry about the fact that I'm using the Force later. I'll sit in my cockpit and beat myself up for going back on my vow to renounce the Jedi arts, wondering what it all means, hating myself for being just like my father. But now I need to do what I need to do, just get it over with.

The boys are home, but I think I sense them in their rooms. I don't feel anyone else. Hopefully Leia hasn't explained to them what happened, yet. If they see me, I might be able to play it off. I almost consider blocking my presence from their minds as I approach the door, making them unable to hear or see or sense me, but I shudder to think of the implications of using the Force to harm them in any way-even if it's just their perception I'm harming, and even if it is just momentary. Instead, I decide I'll just have to explain as best I can, and hug them goodbye, and make myself smile like nothing's wrong.

Anakin's going to know, though.

I decide I can't procrastinate at all, and I resolutely open the door, quietly stepping down the hallway to the bedrooms, snatching up my stuff and putting it in a canvas satchel like I used to carry when I lived on the street, taking some of my medication, putting on a jacket, wondering if there's anything I'll regret not bringing. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what I'll need.

Don't know where I'm going.

What the fuck am I doing?

"Dad?"

Right on cue. "Anakin…." I turn to see him standing in the doorway, huge, pale eyes staring up at me. "Anakin, I don't know how to explain this to you."

"Where are you going?" His voice breaks.

I close my eyes against the pain in my chest. "I'll come back, Anakin, I promise."

"Really?"

"Yes." I swear to myself that I will. "I just have to figure some things out, okay?"

"What things?"

"Um…things about myself. About the war before you were born. It's a long story."

The boy seems somewhat reassured, somewhat soothed, and I hold him tight in my arms. Over a year of trying so hard to develop a real relationship with him, and here I could be destroying it in one day. "I love you. I'm sorry."

"As long as you come back, it's okay," he says faintly.

I will. I will, I will, I will. I smile half-heartedly and hold tighter. "Listen to me, Anakin. You can't tell anyone you saw me for at least twenty minutes after I leave, okay? It's important."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Even Mom?"

"Even Mom. Even Ben and Han. Can you do that?"

"What about Threepio?"

"Especially Threepio."

"But, Dad, I bet he already knows you're here."

My heart sinks. "Is _he_ here?"

"Yeah, he's in my room."

Fuck.

I hesitantly peer out my door to find him vigilantly blocking the exit to the main room. "Oh, my!" he exclaims. "Just as I feared! I must alert security."

"Threepio! Threepio, no! Listen to me!" I dash down the hallway, duck around him, and block him from leaving. "Threepio, you can't call security. This is a complicated matter-"

"Master Luke, you are endangering yourself and the children by being here-"

"I'm about to leave. _Please…."_

He stares at me a moment with bright yellow expressionless eyes. "Very well, Master Luke, but I must at least inform Mistress Leia. She'll know what to do better even than I." He pushes past me, going to the com unit.

And I reach to the back of his neck as he passes and shut him off, gently leaning him against the wall, sighing in relief.

"Dad?" Anakin's troubled voice says behind me.

"It's okay. I just need a head start, is all."

"What would happen if they caught you?"

I don't want to think about it, nor do I have time. I've suddenly sensed a presence at the door, someone who can't possibly have known that I'm home, someone I know I can count on to help me.

When Han steps in, and sees me, he rolls his eyes, looking more annoyed than upset, and says, "Dammit." He closes the door behind him, puts his hands on his hips and says, "Don't you think about things before you do 'em? What the fuck is wrong with you, kid? You're gonna make everything a thousand times worse."

"I know-"

"I'm callin' Leia." He fishes a comlink out of his jacket pocket.

"No! Han, listen to me. We don't have much time before they figure out where I went. I have to get out of here. Please, you've gotta help me."

"No, Luke, you need to go back to your holdin' cell and stand trial, 'cause that's the only way out of this. That's the only way you're gonna get to be with the kids again."

I shake my head. "I honestly cannot believe I'm hearing Han Solo say this. Ten years ago, you would have rescued me yourself, gun blazing."

He puts the comlink away. "Things were different back then." It sounds like he wishes they still were. "But you can't run away from this, Luke. You can't just up and leave every time things get hard. I thought you finally got that."

"I do! I'm not running away, Han."

"Really?" he asks lamely.

"Really. Look, they think I was aiding Vader. You know I wasn't but…I think I need to get proof of the real reason I was meeting with him. It's the only way I'm going to clear my name."

"So…you're gonna go running around the Galaxy looking for proof that…you and Vader…."

"Yeah."

"And you're actually gonna come back here and present it in court."

"I…yeah."

"That's a stupid fucking plan, and you know it."

"It's all I got. Do you have a better idea?"

He doesn't. "Where are you even gonna go?"

"I don't know! I just need to get out of here. Then I'll figure it out. I don't have time for this, Han!" I tug my bag onto my shoulder and go to hug Anakin one more time.

"No, kid-"

"Hold on." I say goodbye to my son, and I promise again to come home. He nods, his eyes getting glassy. At last, I come back to the living room and say, "What?"

"If you're gonna do something this reckless and dumb, I should probably come with you."

I laugh. "What?"

"If you go out there by yourself, you're gonna end up gettin' frustrated and scared and usin' again, and then you'll never come back and deal with this."

"That's not gonna happen."

"Yeah, it will. I'm not lettin' you go alone."

"Han, if I can't find what I need, or if I end up getting caught, you'll get in trouble for aiding me."

"I know. So you better know what you're doing."

I hesitate. "Even before I was a drug addict with a mental illness, I was known for my poor planning and lack of foresight. I have _no idea_ what I'm doing."

He nods, staring deep into my eyes, the smallest hint of a crooked smile on his face. "Yeah. I know."

My heart pounds, and I smile in spite of myself. "Alright. Well, we better get going."


	12. Short Jumps

We are pursued, but too late and too slowly to hold the _Falcon_ up much. There's no firing, no chase, just my stomach clenching in fear moments before we make the jump. Han and I both exhale audibly, turning to look at each other silently. Though I feel relieved and excited at our escape, it only takes a matter of seconds for that to fade, and for me to realize anew that we have no plan whatsoever, that we're making everything worse, that by no means, regardless of everything else, should I have let Han get dragged into this.

I almost say something about it-apologize, I guess-when he says, "Couple short jumps to nowhere to confuse 'em. Like we used to."

During the war. I nod.

"And then what?" he asks. His hazel eyes are hard. It's sinking in for him, too.

I shrug and shake my head.

"You gotta have some idea. C'mon, Luke-this was your stupid plan. Were are we supposed to start?"

"Tatooine, I guess," I say. I don't want to go there, and its name feels terrible on my tongue. But it really is the only place I can think to start. "I know next to nothing about what happened, Han. How I was born. What happened to…to him. Maybe I can…."

He nods. "Yeah. Makes sense. Problem is, though-don't you think that's one of the first places they'll be lookin' for you?"

"I guess. Maybe not. I'm pretty vocal about hating Tatooine, and it's not like I still have family there." That I know of.

He nods again, more thoughtfully. "You better be right. I didn't get you off Coruscant just to get arrested first place we go. Maybe we should, you know, go incognito."

I laugh.

"I'm serious. You might think you look Arkanisan still, but you don't. You're gonna stand out, and that's gonna make people wonder. And I sure don't. 'Round Mos Eisley, that won't matter, but out in the sticks where you're from, it will."

There's a part of me that swells with pride at hearing that I don't look Arkanisan. Of course I don't. I'm too pale, my hair's too short, and I dress more like a Corellian street kid than a farm boy. That all said, I have a great deal of experience not getting recognized, blending in. Shouldn't be too hard. "We should ditch the _Falcon_ on Arkanis. We can pick up some stuff there-I'll dye my hair and eyes, get some…." I look down at my black leather jacket, glad that Leia'd brought some of my own clothes to my cell. If I were still wearing a uniform or a flightsuit, I'd be even worse off. "Some clothes…."

"You're gonna dye your eyes?" He sounds disgusted.

"It's not that bad, Han. It only stings for a second, and it lasts for at least two weeks. I used to do it a lot. My eyes are kinda…."

"Famous?" he asks, raising an eyebrow, smirking. He leans forward. "Dreamy?"

I frown and he laughs. "Recognizable," I murmur, annoyed. "I was trying to stay anonymous."

"What color'd you dye them?"

"Dark."

"Was that before or after the eyeliner phase?"

Why do I tell him anything? "Shut up, Han."

He laughs again, but I suppose instead of being bothered, I should just be happy that he doesn't seem mad at me. Stars know I'd deserve it. "Okay," he says after a moment. "You had worse plans, I'll give ya that. And you and me are both pretty good at hiding when we want to. You wanna take the commuter ferry like you an' Leia did when…."

I nod. The first time I'd been home after Yavin and the first Death Star, I'd taken Leia to Mos Eisley to see if one of the illegal clinics there would give her a late term abortion, because the clinics in the core wouldn't. We never made it to the clinic, but it wasn't because we'd been caught. It was because she'd changed her mind. My nineteen-year-old self didn't know how to handle either option, so I'd done all I knew how to do-held her while she cried, promised to be there no matter what happened, kept her safe. It was on Tatooine, in Biggs' bed at his parents' house, snuggling chastely with Leia, that I promised I'd never tell anyone I wasn't Ben's father. It would be months still before I asked her to marry me. That day, I didn't even know how she felt. But I knew how I felt. The commuter ferry back to meet up with Han had been one of those segments of time when everything seems hyperreal because your whole life has just been shaken to its core. The teenage princess beside me was returning to the Alliance ready to face the fact that she was going to be a mother, which meant, thanks to my willingness to do anything and everything for her, that I was going to be a father. And I'd barely even touched her.

The commuter ferry is so dismal. It's the absolute opposite of class and glamour. When I was growing up, I'd thought that if I ever left Tatooine, it would be on that ship, stopping at every possible planet on the route, taking a trip that could be hyper jumped in three hours and turning it into a two-day crawl. It was so cheap, even if you got a bunk and meals, that a poor moisture farmer like Uncle Owen could have afforded to buy me a ticket, if he'd ever wanted to. It was by pretending to be creditless Arkanisan farm kids that Leia and I had ridden the ferry undetected. As if the Empire would have been looking for us there.

"Yeah, let's take the ferry."

"You sure, 'cause if that's gonna bring up bad-"

"Han, this whole _thing_ is going to bring up bad memories! Do you think I _want_ to go to Tatooine? Do you think I want to know _anything _about Vader?" I sigh and stuff my hands stubbornly into my jacket pockets, as if I were cold, as I sink deeper into my chair. "This is going to keep coming back for the rest of my life unless I do something to lay it to rest. And what if Ben finds out who his real father is?"

"You're his _real_ father-"

"You know what I mean. And by your logic, you're the boys' real father."

We've argued about this before. Han insisting I'm Ben's real father, me insisting that if raising instead of siring a child made you a father, I had no children, not even Ben, and certainly not Anakin. As far as I can tell, we're both right, and it never gets us anywhere, and usually just pisses us both off. I feel horrible for leaving. He feels horrible that he knows my kids better than I do. Han drops the old argument.

"If Ben finds out…how he was conceived, I need to be able to give him answers, Han. Or even if he and Anakin find out that Vader was my father. Or if…and this would be the worst…if they find out that Leia and I are…. I need to be able to talk about it. I need to know what happened, for Ben and Anakin. That's the closest to making everything right I'm ever going to be able to come."

He nods. "You know…sayin' you're a good dad's probably a stretch. But you never stop thinkin' about them, do you?"

"They…are so much like me. Both of them. I want them to grow up to be…what I couldn't. If I can spare them any of the pain I've…." I'm feeling anxious again, and I think I should go take one of my pills. But I don't want Han to see me doing it, so I wait. I'm not trying to hide it, I just don't want him to worry, and he will. Or he'll automatically assume I'm abusing them. He can be so overcautious about me it's completely obnoxious, sometimes. I'm not doing anything wrong.

"Arkanis it is," he says lowly, punching something into the navicomputer. "But we gotta make it tight, alright? We're on planet no more'n three hours. Soon as we ditch the _Flacon_ and make ourselves pretty, we gotta be on that ferry."


	13. A Glass Darkly

"Just freaks me out," Han says, reading the dropper filled with iris coloring. "You're not supposed to put shit in your eyes."

"It's totally safe, Han," I say, grabbing the dropper.

"Yeah, that's always been a big priority for you," he grumbles.

I ignore him and go into the bathroom, still misty from the shower in which I washed out my hair dye. Though still an unkempt five centimeters long, my hair is now several shades darker, no longer deep gold but burnt umber-but I made sure to get a dye that claims it creates "natural-looking highlights," since I have to look like I've been in the sun some. It's gotten long enough over the past couple weeks that it's starting to lay down on my head for the first time in years. I'd almost cut it several times, but each time stopped myself, ever since Han asked me why I keep it so short. Why am I punishing myself? What am I afraid of? Weird compulsion, anyway. A ritual, my therapist calls it. To deal with the anxiety. She says that's why I picked ixetal, too-the ritual of smoking calms me down just as much as the chemicals did, which is why it's easier for me to fight the cravings when I can still smoke something, even if it doesn't get me high. I wish she hadn't told me about all that, because now I wonder if everything I do is a ritual, a behavior that is essentially non-fuctional, at least the way it's enacted, but I can't bring myself to deviate from. Maybe not eating is a ritual. Can _not _doing something be a ritual?

Is analyzing your behavior looking for rituals a ritual?

I blink the dye out of my eyes and wait for the stinging to go away, for my vision to clear. By the time I can see my reflection again, the dye has already chemically interacted with my irises, and left them a deeper brown than my hair.

It takes me back to being twenty-three, working as a mechanic on Corellia, being hung over absolutely constantly-unless I was drunk-and saving up my money, telling myself that I was going to figure it out. I was going to have a normal life and open my own shop where I could do custom speeder work. And I was seeing Tarvin, and I really liked him, and it seemed like everything might be okay until he found out I was still married, that I had a huge bounty on my head (on then still Imperial-held Corellia), that I'd lied about my name the entire time I'd known him. And we might not have even broken up after that if I'd been able to keep my anger under control. If I hadn't lost my job. If I could sober up once in a while. If he hadn't found me on our bathroom floor with open wrists.

I ruined that boy. So I just added him to my list of reasons to keep drinking, and I never told him how sorry I was.

Maybe someday I should.

"You blind yet?" Han asks, ducking his head into the bathroom.

"What? No-I told you, they're not bad for your eyes."

Standing behind me, he regards my reflection with furrowed brow. "You know…you look like-"

I know what he's going to say, so I stop it, reinterpret it. "Like Ben. I know."

"No…. I mean, yeah, you do, but Ben looks like his_ mom_."

I shudder a little, inwardly. "Yeah. I know."

Han looks a uncomfortable, probably thinking he shouldn't have brought it up. Which he shouldn't have. "I just never noticed before. I mean, I never thought you did."

Until he saw me with dark hair and eyes. I know, that's the first time I saw it, too, years ago. Leia has better skin than I do, more delicate features, but it's mostly just the coloring that's all that different. Our eyes are huge. We both have high cheekbones, though Leia has a rounder face, so you can't always tell. Her nose is smaller than mine but shaped the same. I wish I'd never noticed.

"It's weird, right?" I ask.

"That you look alike?"

"That…we look alike in ways that aren't obvious…just makes me wonder if I subconsciously noticed when I first met her, if…."

"If that's why you're attracted to her?"

Yeah…. "I mean…she's beautiful. Much better looking than me and always was. But-"

"Kid, don't drive yourself even more crazy. You look kinda like your ex. Big deal."

Sometimes I wonder why Han and I are friends. Why we even liked each other in the first place, never mind anymore. But I think that sometimes I just need him around to say things like that to shake me out of my obsessive, serious thoughts, jar some sense into me. Sometimes it does the trick and I immediately feel better. That's one thing, out of many, that I like about him. I still don't really get what he likes about me, though. "Is it gonna…give you the creeps? To look at me and see her?" I ask cautiously.

"No," he says like he doesn't care at all, and he's not sure why I'm still even asking about it.

I wouldn't change my hair and eyes back anyway. So few grown humans Galaxy-wide are naturally fair that my coloring really is my most identifiable characteristic, especially in the Core. I never got recognized on Imperial Corellia-the only reason Tarvin even found out is that I felt bad for not being honest with him and finally got up the courage to tell him one day. And for some reason, probably because there are brunettes in my immediate family, the darker hair and eyes don't look out of place on me.

Now that I don't look like me, I can venture more freely though the spaceport and look for something to wear. Something that makes me look like I'm from Tatooine. Imagine, me _trying_ to look like I'm from Tatooine. Too bad I don't have my old….

"Han?"

"Yeah?"

"What did you do with my old stuff? Did I leave anything in my locker?"

"Yeah, I think so. I dunno, I left it how you left it. Maybe Leia did something with it, though."

I don't know why it didn't occur to me months ago to see what was in my old locker on the _Falcon_. Maybe I didn't want to go _that_ far back, or maybe I honestly just didn't think of it. There might be stuff in there from more than eleven years ago, as far as I know. I seem to remember a very comforting homemade brown poncho that lost most of its comforting qualities as I tried to distance myself from my origin, intentionally losing all but a suggestion of my accent, wearing tailored clothing, and marrying Core nobility. I forgot all about it until just now.

The metal wall compartment yields the poncho, its once-rough fabric tempered by constant use so many years ago that it is impossibly soft in my unsure hands. My old tunic is there, too, its color uneven from repeated bleachings to preserve its starkness, its cloth so threadbare at the seams that, in a few months, Aunt Beru was going to have to make me a new one.

The pants aren't here, or the boots. I think I'd worn the pants for awhile, even after I'd stopped using the rest. I'd gotten rid of the boots-they looked too farm boy for my quickly expanding world. The belt had been left on the first Death Star, traded for a stolen stormtrooper belt which I'd worn and used for months afterward, also missing now. There's a few other things in here, random junk, odds and ends of clothes I barely recognize or care about. I was half dreading and half expecting to find my tunic from mine and Leia's wedding, but I know I wore it a lot thereafter-it's no surprise it's not in the locker. The only things here are things that didn't really get used but I didn't want to get rid of.

"No way," Han says, gently taking the white shirt from my hands. "I remember this thing. It was too small on you. Man, were you ever awkward."

I blush, mostly in anger, as I take it back, reflecting momentarily that it might actually fit better, now that I'm so thin. "I was the way I was because of the circumstances of my upbringing. I'm different, now."

"Sometimes I think you try to be anything but that kid. Even if what you are is worse."

I examine the tunic sullenly. "No one liked me."

"I liked you."

I don't know what to say.

"You gonna wear that?"

"I need pants and boots. And a belt."

"We'll get 'em. I think you should wear it."

"I'll feel weird."

"But you'll feel like you belong back home. That's what we need-to blend, ya know?"

I nod. "You're not allowed to laugh at me when you see me in it, though," I add hurriedly.

He smiles as if laughing was exactly what he had intended to do, but says, "'Course not."

Two hours later, two scraggly, dark-haired Tatooinian peasants board a trade route ferry, one tall with a short, unkempt beard, the growth of a week or more, and hazel eyes; the other short and slight with deep brown eyes; both with small, meager canvas bags, the small one in an old brown poncho. The tall one looks watchful but casual, keeping an eye on his small companion as they pick a secluded corner bunk. The short one, dark circles under his dark eyes, mostly looks tired, but lots of overworked and underfed farmers look tired.

I sneak off to the mess hall when the ship is asleep, leaving Han snoring in the bed we feel safer sharing. I take a couple pills and smoke a couple sticks-I didn't want anyone to see me smoking before, because no poor Tatooinian farmer would waste his income on something useless and destructive like soft spice. A light from the corridor hits the viewport. If I focus my eyes one way, I only see the sublight starlines, but focused on the transparasteel, my eyes turn the window into a dark mirror, and if it weren't for the dark hair, my murky reflection in its white tunic might look like an twelve-year-old holograph. A better mirror would prove that perception wrong, but I see it for a minute.

I'm glad Aunt Beru won't be there when I get back. I don't want her to see me now.


	14. Anchorhead

_Author's note: Though my _Shadows_ series follows canon in many ways, especially that of the original trilogy, it is obviously AU in most respects. The same is true here-though there are similarities to the canonical people and places of Tatooine, there are also differences. For example, Biggs' father is called Huff Darklighter and is one of the wealthiest men in his area, as in canon. Gavin Darklighter, however, in my stories, is Huff's much younger son instead of nephew. These differences are intentional, sometimes for important reasons, and sometimes for my own, less obvious reasons. Contradictions between canon and my stories-in this section and elsewhere-should not be interpreted as errors._

_I had originally intended this short story-because that's what this chapter is, a short story, five times the length of my usual chapter-to stand on its own as supplemental to the _Shadows_ series. But I've decided on a new format for _Burning Bright_, wherein I will be including short stories throughout as I go, somewhat like the continuing background narrative in _The Shadows Suit Me_. Each of the flashback stories will be self-contained and could, in theory, be read alone without the rest of _Burning Bright_, but will contribute to an understanding of that story as a whole._

* * *

Anchorhead and the Salt Flats, Nearly Twelve Years Ago….

This was not how I expected to come home.

I hadn't expected to come home at all, I guess. But never would I have thought that if I did come back to Tatooine one day, it would be on one of the mass transport ships with a princess asleep against me, her head on my shoulder, my arm protectively around her. And had I been able to guess all that, I still wouldn't have known how it would feel. Not happy or excited or triumphant, that I had accomplished so much, that I had a medal and an officer's rank, that I held in my arms the most amazing girl I'd ever met. Instead, I was worried sick, sleep deprived, anxious, terrified.

Leia shifted and sighed, and I kissed the top of her head. She hadn't been sleeping well, either, between the nightmares and the nausea and the long and complicated trip we'd taken to get this far. We'd decided it would be safer and more confounding to potential Imperial agents to fly on super cheap, slow-moving, local vessels to get back to the rim, dressed like poor farmers and trying as best we could to blend in with the masses. It wasn't hard for me-I _was_ one of them: young, angry, uneducated, poor, my speech heavily accented. Leia, her hair worn in a loose, messy braid and colored with a product to give her what looked like sun-bleaching, her skin artificially tanned, the circles under her eyes worse than ever, wrapped in my old poncho, was fairly convincing as well. Her round stomach helped considerably. Women her age from poor farming communities were pregnant more often than not.

She sat up suddenly, her exhausted eyes betraying more worry than they had back when she was in better shape. She really was a wreck. "What time is it?"

I had to stay calm to center her. "We've only been out an hour," I said softly, stroking her back. I'd almost called her "princess," but stopped myself in time. I guess it would have been fine. After all, to me it was a pet name, so it would sound like one.

Her smile looked even more weary than her eyes. "Oh," she sighed, snuggling into my shoulder again. "I just don't want to miss our stop."

"We won't miss our stop. You can sleep. You need it."

"I feel terrible."

"I know. Maybe you should eat something."

She shook her head. "It will just come back up."

"You need to eat, Leia."

She shook her head stubbornly. "It doesn't matter."

I sighed, tired of having this conversation. She wasn't keeping the baby, but that didn't mean she didn't have to take care of herself. She was still pregnant for now, after all. She needed to eat well and get enough sleep if she was going to stay healthy. "Leia…."

"I'll eat when I wake up."

I nodded, holding her tighter. "Okay."

Her breathing slowed again as I diligently kept my eyes open, surveying the shuttle for potential threats, seeing no one but tanned peasants in their white and brown tunics. A middle-aged woman across from us, probably a grandmother already, with a kind and gentle face that spoke of years of simple contentment, smiled at me. "Long trip?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yeah."

Her smile grew as she cast a quick glance at Leia. "Congratulations. Your first?"

It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about. I guess I hadn't realized how obvious Leia's condition was, even through the poncho. I firmly reminded myself of our cover-story, that I'd been a ship-hand on a local cargo vessel. I'd met Leia at an agrarian port-of-call, and we'd gotten married and quickly pregnant. We'd then decided, for reasons I couldn't fathom, but I knew a lot of Arkansians would, to go back to my native Tatooine and live on my family farm. It was so commonplace and innocuous a story that no one would ever think twice about it.

I smiled, hoping it looked self-conscious and tired, and not forced. "Oh. Yeah. Thanks."

She patted me gently on the knee. "Now, don't be nervous. I was about your age when I had my first. You're what, seventeen, eighteen?"

The Empire knew our ages. Probably safer to lie. "We're both seventeen."

"See, that's just the right age. It's easier for younger women. She'll be fine."

I nodded. "Yeah, I know." Say something else, I told myself. Stop acting weird. Say something cute, so she pities you. "She just…hasn't been feeling well, you know?" I finished with a self-conscious and sheepish smile.

"That's normal at her stage. What is she, five months?"

"Yeah. Well, four and a half." Or something. I guess I wasn't sure.

"She's big for four and a half. Must be a boy."

I had no idea. "...Yeah."

"It gets better, I promise. I bet your folks are excited."

My folks. There was no way I could smile through lying about having parents. Please, please think I'm just nervous, lady. "Yeah, they're really happy. We're going to see mine right now."

"Staying with them long?

"Until he's born, at least."

"Oh, that will be nice for your mother."

My mother. "Yeah, she can't wait."

"Well, I'll let you two rest." She took some knitting out of her satchel, then smiled brightly. "You three."

I smiled in return, a smile which completely faded the second she looked away from me. I nuzzled Leia, wishing we could be just innocent, boring commoners, whose biggest worry was whether we were ready for this baby. And I wished we had parents. And I wished we weren't in constant fear for our lives. And most of all, I wished that I'd been lucky enough to give Leia this baby in love like everyone assumed, because the truth of its conception was so upsetting I could hardly think about it. Though I knew Leia did. Every second.

When we finally got off the transport in Mos Eisley, Leia was dead on her feet. Nothing besides her constant beauty-now unhindered and unhelped by makeup, silk dresses, and elaborate hairstyles-even suggested a princess, for which I was grateful. She looked like she belonged here. I tugged the satchel out of her hands and slung it lover my shoulder with my own, despite a weak protest from her, and took her hand. "It's gonna be hot out there, hotter than you're used to," I whispered. "You ready?"

She nodded, her eyes empty.

I tried to smile for her, but could barely muster it. I suddenly realized that though I'd blend in well here, I hadn't done anything to make myself look unlike the boy the Empire was already hunting for. We'd just have to make for the Darklighters' fast and hope for the best. I kissed the back of Leia's hand, and the gratitude and something else-affection?-in her eyes when she looked up at me, that was real. That looked genuine. The first real emotion she'd shown in weeks besides concern and exhaustion. "Don't worry," I said firmly, and she nodded again.

I'd wondered if the heat and all the sunlight would seem more extreme, after living in space and in jungles and underground in bunkers, but instead, it seemed hyper-normal, like I was suddenly and finally back in an environment I was built for. It had never been the climate on Tatooine that bothered me. I actually missed the bright, dry warmth. The jungle on Yavin had been everything wrong-so completely, disgustingly wet, and sometimes as cold as fifteen degrees during the day, and sometimes as warm as thirty-five at night. I had never heard of such a thing. And the rain. All the rain. I couldn't sleep in the humid heat any more than I could work in constant downpour. Leia said I'd get used to it, that the climate was a little different everywhere and not always as predictable as Tatooine. Some places had extreme seasons, and some places varied day by day. I wondered how I could get used to anything that changed constantly.

I bought Leia a cool bottle of water from the first vendor we met, and she guarded it carefully per my instructions, making sure to keep the lid closed so that none was lost, holding it close so that no passing kids stole it. We rented a speeder, making a little bit but not too much of a show of arguing between us about the price. We had more than enough money, but the characters we played wouldn't have any, so it was really part of the disguise.

Leia was too good an actor when she wanted to be. Suddenly, all of the hauntedness left her eyes but the exhaustion stayed, and she braced her back with her hands, emphasizing her condition as she said, imitating my accent so well I had to suppress my astonishment and an unexpected amusement, "Tav, we can _not_ afford that," she whispered vehemently.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" I asked in much the same tone. "Do you want to walk to Ma's place? It's a hundred kilometers-you wouldn't make it two in this heat, not…." I paused, since we didn't talk about it openly, but Leia was already committed to the pregnant wife character, so I might as well go ahead. "Not in your condition."

She looked like she was about to cry, and I wondered if I'd struck the wrong chord before realizing it was all part of the act. Her voice grew softer. "I'm just worried-"

"I…I know, Cara," I said gently, taking her hand, looking into her eyes. It took absolutely no acting on my part to say, "But it's gonna be okay," like I meant it with all my heart.

"Tav-"

"I promise." I squeezed her hand.

She did smile, a little, squeezing my hand in return.

"We'll take it," I said evenly to the attendant.

He smiled at me. "You kids short?"

"No…no, we have it. It's fine."

He thought for a moment, then said, "You know, I hate to see a pretty girl in her condition have to drive a hundred in this heat. Tell ya what, I'll give you a closed one with climate control for the same price, but I still got to make you pay the deposit. You'll get it back."

I hesitated as if unwilling to accept his generosity.

"Look, I know things are with money when you're young and starting a family. I'm happy to help, long as you kids bring back the speeder in one piece."

I hesitated again, and looked at Leia. "That okay with you?"

"We can't afford the deposit."

"We'll get it back."

"Yeah, but…only if you don't wreck it, Tav."

I laughed, and she managed a smile. "Okay, we'll take it."

I was relieved to be out of the city, where we were less likely to be noticed. Leia fell asleep again in the passenger seat, the empty bottle of water discarded at her feet beside her bag, her head pillowed in my balled-up poncho. I couldn't stop casting curious glances at her in her too-small tunic-we'd selected it that way so that it looked like she hadn't been able to afford a new one to accommodate her growing form. The poorer we seemed, the less people would think we were Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, the more we'd fit in, and the more they'd pity our young family and offer us help along the way. But the act aside, she really was pregnant. She really, finally looked it.

I'd promised her I'd do anything I could to make sure she didn't stay that way.

It was an weird thing to promise.

Leia had taken so long to admit to herself what was going on in her body, that by the time she'd actually gone to a clinic to get an abortion, an Imperial clinic, incognito, they'd told her it was too late, that she just had to carry the child to term. She'd accepted the answer with quiet horror, and not wanted to talk to me about it. When she'd finally told me the whole story, I'd been so angry that they'd denied her what she needed, I'd thrown a chair across the floor of the _Falcon's_ lounge. "They can't make you-! You were-! It's not your fault!" I'd stammered, barely containing my rage.

"It's my fault I waited so long," she'd said weakly, sitting at the holochess table in a loose tunic. I hadn't known yet that she was already starting to show.

"It's _not_ your fault!" I'd repeated. "You were in shock! Leia…Leia, what are you going to do?"

She hadn't answered, just looked at the table and sighed quietly. She was so still, so emotionless. When she'd told me she thought she was pregnant, she'd cried. I would have preferred that to that empty, lost silence. What I'd taken for quiet strength when we met had gotten quieter, lost its fortitude, and now kept me up nights worrying. I'd never seen anyone so paralyzed.

A few days later, it had come to me. Abortions were illegal on conservative, traditional, sheltered Tatooine, which meant that the clinics there that did them anyway didn't enforce a cut-off, which I'd told Leia. Still too quiet, she asked me if I'd take her. If course I'd said yes. I had to.

Anything to make Leia okay again. When she hurt, I hurt.

I hadn't given word to anyone here that we were coming. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. More importantly, I didn't know how to get a message to them that the Empire couldn't intercept, and keeping Leia safe was my first priority. She stirred as I decelerated outside Anchorhead, parking the rented speeder behind the Darklighter place in the twilight. "Are we there?" she asked.

"Yeah. Hey-stay out here for a minute. I just want to talk to Huff, tell him what's going on."

"Do you think…."

"What?"

"That there's a chance he'll turn us away?"

"No! No, he'll help us-I just need to prepare him for…I mean, he's like an uncle to me, and I disappeared for almost five months, and now I'm bringing a pregnant girl home…."

She glanced quickly at her belly, winced slightly, then nodded.

"I won't be long." I kissed her cheek and ducked out the door.

No time to be nervous, I walked around to the front of the adobe house and knocked on the door. Biggs' three-year-old brother Gavin answered it immediately, staring up at me with big dark eyes.

I laughed, grateful something had already broken through my fear. "Gav-hey!" I said.

He remembered me. "Luke!" he called, and jumped into my arms, squeezing me tightly. "Biggs died," he told me with all the tact of a small child.

"I know," I said softly, holding him tighter. I wondered how he knew, how word got back. Maybe the Alliance had a way of delivering news to families.

"He's not coming back."

"No."

The ajar door suddenly opened fully, and there was big, bearded Huff Darklighter, frowning at me in astonishment. "Luke…."

"Hey, Huff," I said, putting down Gavin. "I-"

"You shouldn't be here, kiddo. Stormtroopers come through every couple weeks asking if we've seen or heard from you."

Great. I needed to get Leia inside. "Huff, I need a favor. I wouldn't have come if it wasn't important."

"Alright, but get inside before someone sees-"

"It's not just me. I brought someone. She's in my speeder around back."

"This is about a _girl_?" He sighed. "Luke, you're too smart to do something _this_ stupid for-"

"It's important," I reiterated. "Please. She's…she's _pregnant_."

Huff raised his eyebrows in astonishment, then sighed, sounding annoyed. "Dammit, Luke…. I knew you were reckless, but not like this." He thought a moment, looking at the ground. "Fine. Go get her."

I jogged back to the speeder and gathered Leia and our things. She had already hidden back in the comfortable obscurity of my poncho. "Is it okay?" she asked.

"Um…I dunno." I squeezed her hand and said for the millionth time, "But don't worry."

Leia just raised her chin, her eyes empty as always.

Huff motioned us both in and shut the door behind us, then regarded the pair of us with fists on his hips. "This is Leia," I said.

She smiled gently. "I knew your elder son, Mr. Darklighter," Leia said diplomatically. "He was a great man."

Immense sorrow in his eyes, along with a softening thoughtfulness, Huff glanced at me, then back to her. "Where you from?" he asked. "Not around here. Core someplace."

"Alderaan," she breathed, her tone heavy.

His eyes darkened, and he looked like he made up his mind. She must be okay. "Made it off, huh?"

Leia looked away, licking her lips.

"You meet Biggs through the Alliance?"

"Yes, sir." It sounded weird to me to hear Leia call someone sir, but we were at his mercy. Besides, he didn't have another title, and she tended to rely heavily on formality when she was nervous.

"Luke, too, I guess."

"Yes. Luke rescued me from Imperial detention."

"Heat's getting to you, isn't it?"

She did look pale. "I'll be alright."

"No, I know how pregnant women get when it's like this out. Luke, take her to lie down in Biggs' room and turn the air on. Then come talk to me."

I nodded, feeling like I was about to get grounded or something, and took Leia by the hand downstairs where it was cooler, where the bedrooms were in any Tatooine dwelling of any worth. Gavin trailed after us. "Are you gonna have a baby?" he asked Leia.

My stomach clenched and I waited anxiously for her response, wishing I could take it back for Gavin.

She looked down into his big grey eyes and smiled half-heartedly at his childish tactlessness. "Yes."

He seemed satisfied and turned away willingly when his father called down the hallway, "Gav, leave Luke and his friend alone."

I regarded Leia, perplexed.

Biggs' room was the way he left it, model starships we'd made together everywhere, the small bed in an alcove sloppily made, an "Imperial Space Academy, Cardia" poster on the wall opposite. I turned on the boxy little air conditioning unit as Leia sat heavily on the bed, smiling and closing her eyes when the cool air hit her. "Why'd you say yes?" I asked, feeling as if I shouldn't.

"How was I supposed to explain it, otherwise, to a child that small?"

"I dunno." I sat beside her. "Are you okay?"

"It's just hot."

It wasn't just anything-we both knew she hadn't done any better back at the base or on the transports-but I nodded, because it was hot. "You're still sweating, right?"

She furrowed her brow.

"Leia, heatstroke is something you actually have to worry about here."

She sighed. "Yes, I'm sweating."

Barely. But thousands of years of Alderaani ancestors probably hadn't had to sweat to insure their survival, so it wasn't surprising. I retrieved her more water from the kitchen, but by the time I got back, she was asleep on top of Biggs' blankets, looking actually restful for the first time in a long time. I set the water on the bedside table, and kissed her temple. She didn't stir.

I found Huff in a cool and comfortable lounge room on the lowest level, drinking a tumbler of whiskey with an ice cube in it. My family had never been able to afford ice, alcohol, or air conditioning, but I was used to the three existing here. The Darklighters were what passed on Tatooine for rich. "She alright?" he asked me, his voice and manner stern but not angry, and genuinely concerned.

"Yeah. She's from a cold climate. I guess on the part of Alderaan she's from it never got above twenty."

"That sounds awful," he said, handing me a tumbler of my own, complete with whiskey and ice cube. "You look like you need this. Never seen you so edgy in your life."

I accepted it cautiously but with immense gratitude. It's odd-uncomfortable but satisfying-to be treated like an adult by one who's always known you as a child. Besides, he was right. I did need it. I sat beside him and sipped the cool liquor, glad I'd had enough experience with the stuff since leaving that it didn't make me wince.

"So, who's the father?" Huff asked lowly.

I looked up in alarm.

"Come on, Luke. We both know it's not you."

I sighed. I didn't know what it was-that my innocence was that obvious, that the nature of mine and Leia's relationship was clearly not that advanced, or that Huff just assumed, based on the fact that she was so big already and I hadn't been gone long, that I hadn't had time to father this particular child. But he was right, and I thought it best to admit it. "I didn't know him," I said. "He died in the war." It was true enough, and all he needed to know. Leia had made it clear to me that she didn't want anyone to know what had really happened to her. She said she couldn't bear their pity.

Huff's eyes darkened. "I'm sorry to hear that."

I wasn't sorry about it. As far as I was concerned, his sudden death had been far too good for him. but I nodded and said, "Yeah."

"And so you brought her here hoping she could get rid of it."

"I didn't know what else to do." I swallowed the rest of my whiskey.

Huff looked bemused. "Where'd you learn to drink like that?"

"Corellian friend," I replied, smirking, looking into my empty glass.

"Well, I won't tell if you won't." He refilled my glass around the half-melted ice cube, and I got to work on it.

"It's what _she_ wants, right?" Huff said after a moment.

"Huh?"

"Your girlfriend. She wants the abortion."

"…Yeah…?"

"Have you asked her? Or did you just assume?"

"She wants it. She tried in the Core…."

"I'm just checking. I know your heart's in the right place, Luke, but your heart runs away with your head all the damn time. Just making sure you're remembering to think."

I almost protested that all I did was think about it, but it would sound whiney and insolent and not back me up at all.

"Are you in love with this girl?"

I felt the blood rise into my face, and I sipped the whiskey. "Yeah."

He smiled. "Funny. I always thought you and Biggs…."

My blush deepened and I couldn't bear to meet his eyes. I didn't know he'd known. I'd tried so hard to hide it.

"I'm not wrong, am I?" he asked, and he seemed quietly amused.

"I…we…nothing ever…happened," I managed.

"No?"

"No! I mean…we never talked about it. I didn't think…I didn't know how he felt."

"He felt the same," his father assured me gently. I didn't ask how he knew. I assumed it was just fatherly intuition.

My throat clenched and my eyes burned, and I stared into my glass sullenly. "It doesn't matter, now," I breathed.

We sat in silence for a moment, and I finished my second glass. Huff refilled it despite a very quiet and somewhat insincere, "I shouldn't," from me, as I made no attempts to actually stop him.

"Were you there, when he…they said he died in battle."

"Yeah. At Yavin. I was there. He…." I sighed, my breath trembling. "He was covering me." I shook my head. "I've run through it in my head so many times, what could have happened differently…if there was anything I could have done." I blinked, and tears rolled down my cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Huff."

He nodded as if he appreciated it.

A few hours later, after Huff and I had had something to eat along with far too much of the bottle and spent much of the time telling stories about Biggs-tearful and laughing in turns-I stumbled back to my departed friend's room, where my new best friend was still fast asleep. I drunkenly noted that she'd drank the water, which was something, even if she hadn't woken up to have any dinner. We'd lately taken to sleeping in the same bed, so I didn't expect any protests from her when I stripped to my pants and spooned up behind her. She was so soft, so small and so perfect. And I was finally somewhat at ease, my head swimming in the whiskey, my muscles relaxed, my worries significantly dulled. And I had Leia in bed with me. So many things had gone wrong in my life, and there was so much to worry about. But I had Leia. And right at that moment, I was able to really catch hold of that, to fully appreciate it, and I was happy.

But did I have her? In bed with me, right now, yes, and most nights. And she was my best friend, and how close we'd gotten in so short a time confused and inspired me. And we held hands, and snuggled, and often kissed. But rarely on the lips-maybe five times all together. People called her my girlfriend, but I didn't, and she didn't. Then, people thought it was my baby, though neither of us even addressed her pregnancy openly with others. Wedge told me that someone had tried to start a poll among a lot of the pilots, but hardly anyone was willing to put money on it, because "everyone knew" I'd gotten her pregnant, so who would bet against it?

I hadn't known what to say. I didn't contradict him. I refused to even confirm that Leia was carrying a child at all. She told me not to tell anyone, so I didn't, even when asked. Han knew-Leia had told him, and he'd been a big help in arranging the trip out here-and Chewie by conjunction. She'd told Mon Mothma and General Dodonna, who had been close with her parents and now felt that Leia was their responsibility. And they all knew how it had happened, too, and they'd been totally supportive and protective of her, and encouraged me in private to continue looking after her, because, they said, it seemed to help. But no one else, besides those four, had been able to get Leia or myself to openly admit what was going on. I think Wedge took my bushes and bumbling reluctance as confirmation of my hand in it. The whole business clearly scared the hell out of me, and I was obviously in love with her. What more confirmation did he need?

I sighed and held her tighter. Leia. If this had to happen to you…why couldn't it have at least happened…with me, like everyone thought?

I thought about that a lot, and always felt like a chauvinistic jerk. Of course I wished Leia hadn't been raped. But why was an unwanted pregnancy with me some beautiful alternative?-either way, she'd be barely nineteen, fighting a war, constantly running from the Empire, and having terrible morning sickness and the worry of an eventual baby to cope with. Was I really so naive to think that she'd want my baby any more? Was it because I wanted her body so badly, and that way, at least I'd had it once? I didn't like those ideas-they made me sick and angry with myself.

I turned away from Leia a little and lay flat on my back, eyes open to the darkness. When I thought about her, when I touched her, when I heard her voice, my heart glowed like a white sun. When someone mentioned her, I couldn't stop smiling. Everything about her was perfect, especially the things that weren't. Wasn't that love?

What it was, I think, is that the fire I'd seen in her when we met…as the baby had begun to make itself more apparent, that fire had slowly gotten dimmer and dimmer. I knew it would never go out-Leia's temper, her courage, her sharp wit were an immutable part of her. But she had become so lost inside of herself, so preoccupied, understandably, with what was happening in her womb, that I sometimes hardly recognized her.

And I just wanted her to stop hurting.

If I'd been the father, she would have known what to do, and not been afraid. And she would have been completely fine.

I sighed again.

"Luke?" Leia shifted, turned so that her head was resting on the nook of my chest and shoulder. I put my arm tightly around her back. "What's wrong?" she asked sleepily.

"Nothing," I murmured.

Her arm circled my waist. "You want to talk?"

"I want you to get enough sleep."

She propped herself on an elbow and looked at me in the dim light. "Are you drunk?"

I nodded after a moment of hesitation.

She sighed in exasperation. "Luke-"

"I'm sorry." I knew I'd said it too quickly. I'd anticipated her annoyance. We'd talked about it before.

"I don't mind it if you drink. You just…don't know when to stop."

"I'm sorry," I repeated, trying desperately to sound sincere.

She turned away, onto her side as she was before.

I sat up. "Leia…."

"No, Luke, just do whatever you want. I can't tell you what to do."

"Yes, you can. I wanna…I wanna make you happy." I turned so I could hold her, but didn't reach for her. "I love you," I whispered.

"Oh, Luke…." She sounded dismissive and annoyed.

"I do."

"Then tell me when you're sober sometime. I've only ever heard it when you drink."

She was right. I needed to grow a backbone. But when I put my arms back around her, she snuggled reluctantly into me, and I felt a little better. I kissed her neck below her ear, and she sighed softly as if she appreciated it.

"I'm _in_ love with you." It was suddenly very important to me that there be no room for misunderstanding.

She didn't answer.

"I know you want to hear this when I'm sober, but let me talk, okay? I feel like I finally have some thoughts in order. I'll say it all again in the morning if you want."

She didn't seem so sure. "Okay…."

"Everyone thinks…that it's mine."

She didn't miss a beat. "I know."

"What if it was?"

She glanced back at me over her shoulder, but I couldn't see her expression. "What do you mean?"

"I dunno."

"I couldn't keep it, Luke."

"I know that. But…I dunno." I realized what I had been about to say made little sense. "Never mind."

"I thought your thoughts were in order."

"So did I."

She then did something she never did, ever. She turned in my arms just enough so that our lips could come together, and we kissed deeply, more intimately and confidently than we ever had. But it was over too soon. "Thanks for trying," she said.

I laughed bashfully, overcome by the kiss, fighting my overwhelming desire try to get it back. "I'm bad with words."

"I know." I could hear the smile in her voice.

At least it was, apparently, cute.

She didn't kiss me again, and she didn't say anything else, and she eventually fell back asleep. And I was confused and drunk and sexually frustrated for a long time. What did she want from me? What were we?

Sometimes I felt that I could read her thoughts, and other times she was so completely opaque I almost felt like giving up.

But then, I wasn't even sure what I wanted, besides just to be with her.

I woke up, because she had, and there was a small part of my brain telling me that she needed me right now. It was still mostly dark. Leia was sitting up, breathing strangely, and my first thought was that she was probably nauseous again and should have had dinner, since it was for some reason worse when she didn't eat. But when I said, "What's wrong?" she just looked at me, picked up my hand, and pressed it to her stomach.

And I felt something, through all the layers of skin and flesh and muscle and placenta. I flinched away, because I'd never touched her stomach and it seemed so intimate, but Leia held me there, and I didn't resist it anymore, because it was important to her.

"Do you feel it?"

"Yeah," I breathed, awestruck and nearly trembling with anxiety. I had no idea how this must be for her. For it to suddenly be this real. It was hard enough for me and it wasn't even inside me.

And then she finally cried. For the first time since she'd told me she was worried that she might be pregnant, I saw Leia cry. I enfolded her and she sobbed on my shoulder, wetting my skin. "I can't do it, Luke."

"Can't do what?"

"I can't…_he kicks_…."

He? Was it a he? I fumbled for a response. "Leia…if you're having second thoughts…."

"I don't know what to do. I can't _have_ him…."

My half-asleep, half-drunk teenage mind refused to cooperate with such a huge topic, which was nothing new, and all I could say was what sounded like the right thing to say. "You can if you want to. He's your baby, this is your body, and there isn't a right answer…."

"_How_? How are we going to-"

…_We_? I'd just spent months trying to figure out how to prepose a "we" relationship to the traumatized princess, and now she was talking about it carelessly as if it already existed. We. I didn't know if I should be excited or terrified. We. "We'll…we'll figure it out, Leia." I managed, realizing as I said it that not only did it sound right, but I meant it. My resolve mounted. "I promise. If you want the baby, then we'll have him. It's up to you."

"But I made you come all the way out here-"

"You didn't make me do anything!" I almost laughed at the absurdity-she was worried about inconveniencing _me_? How could that even be part of this decision process? "It was my idea. I wanted to help." I coaxed her back onto her pillow with quiet reassurances, smoothing her hair away from her face. "It's going to be okay. No matter what you decide, it's going to be fine."

"Would I be a good mother?"

"You'd be a great mother." I meant that part.

"We _can't_ have him." She choked on a sob. "He's half that _monster_-"

"I know. I know." I squeezed her, reflecting that if I just validated everything she said, I wasn't being very helpful. But then, what was I supposed to do? I would love it if she could be happy about this baby, if she could stop worrying. Then, I'd also love it if a child were something that Leia and I didn't have to worry about at all for another ten years at least. We were still kids ourselves.

"So then…I shouldn't have him, because…what if he's anything like-"

"No, Leia, he won't be. You'd raise him to be a good person! You're feeling and well-educated and strong. How could he be any different?"

"I can't control his genes!"

"Of course not, but…I promise, he's not a monster."

"How do you know?" she said into my chest.

I didn't. I didn't know anything. It just seemed counterintuitive that evil could be transmitted through bloodlines. Besides, a lot of Stromtroopers were drafted. He might not have wanted to do any of it. It was no excuse, Force knew, but if it weren't for the war, maybe he never would have turned out that way. "Because _you're_ not." I said it like it was a question. "And you're his mother."

She paused a long time, her breath stilling somewhat. Then, "What would you do?"

What would _I_ do? I couldn't even fathom what it must be like to carry a child. I didn't want to pretend that I could. I pulled back enough to look into her eyes, what little I could see of them, a dim light from the window shining off her tears. "I don't think…I don't think there's a…a logical way to figure it out. You can't just…weigh pros and cons, or think about what makes the most sense, or what other people think you 'should' do. This is something you just have to feel out on your own."

"But we can't…."

"We can. If you want to." What was I getting myself into?

She nodded. She seemed so sure, suddenly. "I want to."

My heart pounded and my voice shook. "Okay. Then we will."

"We _can't_, Luke. How-"

"We'll figure it out. I promise." I'd promise her anything.

"How?" she repeated.

I kissed her very gently, just touching my lips to hers. "We will." And if it was possible, I was even more terrified now than I'd been before on the transport. Absolutely petrified. I was not in any way ready to be a father. In fact, I wasn't even so sure I was ready to be in a serious relationship, not so quickly, at least. But Leia seemed satisfied for the moment, and fell asleep against me, a hand on her stomach. I rested my hand cautiously beside hers, trying to get used to the idea. He didn't move any more. Probably good-maybe he'd wake her up. But I wanted to feel him again. I wanted to see if it tugged at my heart strings this time, or if I'd just get scared like the last time.

"You realize that if she decides to keep this kid, and you two hit it of-and you're gonna, sooner or later," Han had warned me about a month back, "You're gonna be starin' down the barrel of a loaded fatherhood. And I bet you're dumb enough to go through with it, too."

I smiled. Maybe I was just laughing at myself, but regardless, the more I thought about it, the better I felt. A little boy who looked like Leia calling me "dad." Me and his mother holding him and singing to him and teaching him to walk and talk. Him asleep in my arms on my bunk on the _Falcon_. I even imagined myself in my thirties with the child entering his teens, and how I'd remember how hard it was to be a teenager, and how understanding I'd be of what he was going through. I'd be nothing like Uncle Owen. I'd treat him like a human being with his own opinions and desires and life. Yeah. I could be a really good father.

And if I was going to do this, I was going to do this.

I made up my mind for good, not only in the words I'd already given her, but deep down in my soul.

Whatever Leia did, I'd be there. No matter what.

Looked like I was going to have a son.

In the morning, she was quiet again, distracted. I wanted to bring up the half-asleep conversation, to ask her if she still felt the same, if she felt any better, _anything_, but I didn't know how. It was almost as if it had never happened. At breakfast, she asked Huff if he thought the Anchorhead clinic was safe for us, or if she should go somewhere else. He said he'd have to think about it.

To my bewilderment, I felt absolutely crushed. I took it personally, thought that it was somehow because of my shortcomings that she realized that she couldn't keep him after all. I finally brought myself to ask her, when we were alone for a moment, "Leia…I thought…last night. I thought you were keeping the baby."

She sighed. "I don't know. I need a couple more days."

This isn't about me, I reminded myself again. I nodded. "Just…let me know what I can do."

Her big, dark eyes searched the room helplessly for a moment, then rested on me. She smiled self-consciously, then said, "Will you hold me?" I didn't miss a beat.

"I wish my father…." Leia murmured, her head buired.

"I know."

"If I could just talk to him once…."

I squeezed her.

"Or if I could just go home for an hour…." She looked up. "Luke, how far from here did you grow up?"

"Not far. Not by Tatooine standards."

"Will you show me?"

Banishing memories of charred skeletons from my mind, thinking only of helping Leia work through this, I nodded.

We waited until the hottest part of the day had passed, then left Anchorhead as quietly as we could. It was weird driving over the wastes in a closed speeder pumped full of cold air. I could see the desert but I couldn't feel it or smell it. It almost felt like I wasn't there at all, just somewhere similar, or looking at holos. The princess stared at the rock formations with curiosity, and watched me just as intently. I didn't say much. I didn't have anything to say.

"Isn't it dangerous to be isolated out here like this?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She waited.

"I mean, we were really careful. Fighting off scavengers and raiders…that we could do. Armies, though…."

"Why do you feel responsible?"

"I wasn't there. I should have been."

She knew that arguing with me, trying to show me that, logically, it wouldn't have helped, like everyone else did, wasn't going to make me feel better. So she just put her hand on my knee and squeezed, and I smiled gratefully.

We pulled up near the entrance dome. Unlike Huff's expensive, climate-controlled estate, all but the entrance was underground. I felt simultaneous guilt and relief when I looked east and saw two more tombstones than I'd grown up with-I hadn't buried Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, but someone had. Probably the Darklighters. Leia followed my gaze as she stepped out of the speeder, then took my hand in silence. She didn't try to pull me close enough to read the tombstones, nor did she try to get me to think about something else. She just stood there with me.

"What were they like?" she asked at last.

I shrugged. "I didn't really know Owen that well. He was…he was angry. He was really closed off. And controlling, of me and Aunt Beru. She said it was because he worried about us, that he was just trying to keep us safe. Now I know she was right, but…I dunno."

"Did he…did he give you those scars?"

Of course, she'd seen my bare back. I didn't answer. It wasn't something I ever wanted to talk about.

"What about your aunt?" She said it differently than I did, with a round vowel. It was one of the words I was having trouble pronouncing with a Core accent.

"She was everything he wasn't. She was…gentle, and loving, and…. Uncle Owen sorta thought with animal instincts, I guess. Aunt Beru thought with her heart."

Leia smiled. "Must be where you get it from."

The suns weren't setting yet, but the desert had started to glow the way it does when the suns get low in the sky, impossibly gold, and that light surrounded Leia who was already glowing, smiling at me. The future and the past seemed intertwined for a moment, my life here dead but still echoing in this place, enclosing my Leia, who was dressed up to look like she belonged in this place, her body in turn carrying a possible future for me in the possible child. I was at a loss; I didn't understand how it was all supposed to hang together, how maintaing moisture vaporators had prepared me for who I was now or what was to come, how I was supposed to make any choices at all or be an adult out in the wide Galaxy with my sheltered upbringing. But for a minute, it was like the past, present, and future were all immediate, all folded into each other, and I knew I'd figure it out. Someday, I'd be eighty, and looking back on all of it, and all of it would be in the past, and it would all be the same, and it would all make sense. And they say, and right then, I knew it was true, that old people don't regret mistakes, only missed opportunities. I took Leia's other hand and stood to face her, looking into her eyes with a calm and certainty I rarely felt. "I said I'd say it again in the morning." I leaned slowly down and kissed her deeply. "I love you."

Her expression bordered on unreadable, but carried some astonishment. Somehow, though, I felt that she would say, "I love you, too," before she even did. And she did. And I smiled in relief and elation, wrapping my arms around her waist and holding her, her arms circling my neck, and when I saw her face again, she was smiling the same way.

We were alone on the salt flats. No one lived in the farm house anymore. There was no Alderaan for Leia to go back to.

But in all the chaos, loss, and uncertainty, I was finally sure of one thing.

We had each other.

"I'm not keeping it," Leia said in the speeder on the way back.

I nodded. I knew now that it wasn't anything personal. And she said it evenly, with no fear in her voice. I glanced at her for a moment, and saw her eyes gently focused, no pain, no distraction. Just certainty. She'd made her choice, and she'd made it calmly. "You want to go tomorrow?"

"Yes."

I didn't say anything, just looked out the windshield, driving.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Why?"

"You seemed like you kind of…were starting to want it."

"It's not mine to want."

"You know what I mean."

"Leia…." I glanced at her again, trying to figure out how to say it, suddenly very shy. "After the the war is over, I hope…I really, really hope we're still in each others' lives. And if we are, we should…we should talk about it."

"Having kids?"

I felt myself blushing. "I'm just saying that there'll be a time when we're ready, and when we are, then we'll get another chance."

"What if the war never ends? What if one of us is killed?"

"We can't live our lives thinking that way."

"I know."

"Don't _worry_," I insisted. "Everything will work out, somehow. It'll be alright."

She nodded.

"I think," Leia continued after a moment, "That there's a big part of me that always wanted to be a mother. I didn't realize it before. Maybe I wouldn't have realized it otherwise-I'd always thought I wouldn't have time for it. Or that I wouldn't, if I really was a good leader. Now I know I want to make time. And I don't feel like there's anything wrong with that."

"Then you will. When you're ready."

"What if I'm never ready?"

"Do you think that's gonna happen?"

I heard her smile. "No."

"I always wanted kids," I said. "They're amazing."

"Really?"

"Yeah-I mean…not for another five or ten years at least. But I mean…look at Gavin. He's fascinated by everything. The world is new to him, and that's exciting. He's so anxious to learn, to play, to talk to everyone and touch everything…. I dunno. I guess I thought I'd be good at nurturing that."

Her hand on my knee again. "You will be."

I knew something was wrong as soon as we got into the populated areas just outside of Anchorhead. Something was off. I felt panic, worry, fear, apprehension. I saw the dewbacks and before I even saw their riders, I knew.

I slowed the speeder down and turned a corner casually so that I would be out of their vision, then just kept driving ninety degrees from where I should be. "Where are you going?" asked Leia.

"Dewbacks." I said. "Up by Huff's place."

"What's a dewback?"

"It's an animal. Big lizard. People ride them."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Sometimes…sometimes patrolling stormtroopers ride them. I mean, a lot of people ride them so…it might be nothing. But I don't usually see dewbacks in Anchorhead. And I don't think we should…."

Leia nodded. "We shouldn't take chances. What do we do?"

I shook my head. "I dunno. Getting dark out. Shouldn't stay in the desert-it's not safe."

"Do you know anyone we can stay with tonight?"

"Well, yeah, but Huff said that the stormtroopers come around every few weeks looking for me, asking people if they've seen or heard from me. If that's what they're doing, they probably go to every door. Even the further out ones."

"What about your farm? That wouldn't be safe, either, would it?"

"Probably not."

"Could we go back to Mos Eisley?"

"Looks like we have to. Or spend the night in the desert."

I felt like a coward, running at the first suggestion that something might be wrong. But doing something stupid wasn't going to help anything, and I needed to keep Leia safe. She wasn't really in any shape to fight. "Think we could get a room for the night?"

"Yeah. Let's do that."

We found an inconspicuous, relatively cheap hotel in a quarter of Mos Eisley frequented by traveling natives and off-worlders alike. It's hard to look out of place with company like that. They had a small room open that met Leia's mandatory but not overly high standards for cleanliness-I wasn't sure if she was acting when she said if she was going to pay for a room, it had to meet certain criteria. There was a water shower, a big bed with clean sheets, and a cantina downstairs that would send up food for an extra ten percent. We ate dewback steaks in defiance of the real or imagined stormtroopers, seated at a minuscule table by the room's only window. The brightest moon passed by an upper corner as we ate.

"What do we do in the morning?" Leia asked, later, coming out of the shower with wet hair, wrapped in a hotel robe.

"I don't know. I don't think we should go back to the Darklighters' yet. Maybe the day after."

"Maybe we should go to the Mos Eisley clinic. I can rest here, at the hotel."

I nodded. "Yeah. Then we can get off world in a couple days. Just be done."

Leia looked at herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, smoothed the robe over her stomach. "I look pregnant," she said.

I didn't contradict her. She did.

"I don't know, Luke. Maybe we should just go home."

I almost reminded her that it was up to her, but I'd said that too many times already, so many times it was starting to sound empty. So I didn't say anything.

"It _is_ too late, isn't it? I waited too long." She didn't take her eyes off her reflection, holding her stomach.

I could have given her another lecture about how there wasn't a right answer, but she didn't need lectures. She needed support. I crossed the room and held her in my arms silently. When we started kissing, I hadn't realized we were going to. It just happened. There was nothing feverish about it, nothing desperate and needy, nor did I feel that I was simply trying to comfort her. It just happened. It felt right, perfect. And then we were kissing on the bed, and Leia was taking off my belt and unwrapping my tunic, and I was kissing her neck and her collarbone. And only after all my clothes were off did Leia take off the robe and let me see her beautiful body. So beautiful. For a long time we still just kissed and held each other, because I was afraid to hurt her like _he_ did-so absolutely terrified that I would ever remind her of him. But somehow, eventually, by mutual movements, I was inside her, and we were part of each other. It was intense, overwhelming, but somehow peaceful, silent, still, like it was meant to be. I came inside her, at the same moment feeling her tighten around me, her breath gasping against my neck. We paused, pressed our foreheads together, then I pulled out, and for some reason the first thing I did was ask if she was okay. She nodded, smiling, but her eyes were glassy.

"What?" I asked. "Did I-"

"You didn't do anything wrong," Leia said, a tear spilling out of one of her eyes when she blinked. "I just…wish that had been my first time."

"It was mine," I said softly.

She smiled, but she still looked so sad.

"You…you could pretend it was. I mean, it was the first time that mattered, right?"

She nodded. "Luke…."

"What?"

"Just hold me, please."

I spooned her and covered both of us with the blankets. Leia cried for awhile. I let her, didn't try to comfort her beyond just holding her, or convince her to stop. I sensed that she just needed to cry, to let some things go that she had been holding onto. It had been a long day.

It might have been as much as an hour later when she woke me up from a half-asleep surreal dream to say, "I want to go home."

"To the Alliance?"

"Yes."

"We will."

"Tomorrow morning."

I sat up on an elbow, and Leia turned to lay on her back, looking up at me. "I'm keeping him," she said. "I have to."

"You don't have to."

"I do. _Look_ at me. I'm twenty weeks. I'm half way there."

Half way. Already? I timidly laid my hand across her rounding stomach. "If you're really going to do this, I'm gonna do it with you."

She smiled. "Everyone already thinks it's yours."

I laughed. "Yeah. I know."

"As far as I'm concerned," Leia said, pushing my bangs away from my eyes. "He's yours."

I kissed her. "This is going to be really hard, Leia."

"I know."

"But I swear, I _will_ be there. I'm not going anywhere."


	15. Darklighter

Really Long Author's Note (there's an actual chapter a quarter of the way down—you can scroll past this of you want):

I had never intended to abandon this story. I've actually been writing it (in a sort of disjointed way) since my last post of two years ago. I loved that chapter, the short story about Luke and Leia discovering and admitting to each other the extent of their affection for the first time. I spent months on that chapter, off and on between working on other chapters and projects. I think I began it in August, 2011, but it might have been earlier. That was when everything in my life started falling apart, right around when I started writing that chapter. By the time I decided to use it as a chapter of Burning Bright, and not as a stand-alone story, it was December, 2011, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to save myself.

I could write you a description of what actually happened to me, but it would read like a very boring, American middle-class version of _Shadows_. I suppose I could give you a rundown, a timeline, with some background:

Sometime in the 80s: I'm born  
Spring 1997: I become obsessed with Star Wars  
Spring 2000: I'm diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression  
September, 2003: I go to college  
November 2004: I begin writing _The Shadows Suit Me  
_June 2005: I finish writing _The Shadows Suit Me_  
Sometime around here: I start realizing I have a drinking problem (yes, after _Shadows_ was over)  
May 2006: I get engaged  
March 2007: I call off the engagement  
June 2007: I graduate with two bachelor degrees and move back in with my parents to lick my wounds from my failed relationship and decide what to do with my life  
January 2009: I apply to graduate school  
March 2009: I get into a graduate school in New York City  
April-September 2009: I literally travel around the world. Around. The whole way around. Mango juice goes great with vodka.  
September 2009: I start grad school, fresh off the plane from Australia without stopping home first  
Spring 2010: A professor tells me I'm a bad writer, and, partially in response, I start writing _Burning Bright  
_September 2010: I move to a hip neighborhood in Brooklyn, still going to school, but dealing with the stress of it by drinking at punk shows and artsy bullshit parties, like, every night  
May 2011: I start doing hard drugs because fuck everything_  
_June 2011: I'm done with classes so I start a very challenging job that requires me to work eighteen hour days sometimes. I'm still trying to write my master's thesis so I can graduate. I'm still on drugs.  
August 2011: I fall in love, we move in together after my tweaker roommate kicks us out. New roommate is also a tweaker. Love leaves me because he can't take the stress of the living situation. Also we had bedbugs. Then there was an actual hurricane in there somewhere.  
October 2011: I move in with a former roommate in his new digs. He likes doing drugs, too, so we ruin everything forever.  
November-December 2011: David Bowie "can't tell the difference between love and cocaine" moment. I'm still writing both _Burning Bright_ and my thesis, as well as working long hours, but booze, drugs, and my roommate (with whom I think I'm in love) have most of my attention.  
Late December 2011: Roommate gets a girlfriend. I stop sleeping and writing and hanging out with people, and just get high out of my mind instead, alone, in my room.  
January 2012: I realize I'm killing myself and decide to move home  
February, 2012: I go to New Orleans to stay with a friend to get clean, then I go home to my parents  
March 13, 2012: I do drugs for the last time  
April 2012-present: I slowly put my life, my health, and my fractured psyche back together.

This is true.

So that's about it. I know that is a really long author's note, but I want you to know where I was all that time I wasn't posting. I never stopped writing, it just became so fragmentary it wasn't postable. But I've been planning on coming back the whole time, it was just a matter of getting the product completed. I love you all, and the reviews that my stories continue to get even in my posting absence have helped me not lose faith in myself and in my story.

I leave you now with this quote from the introduction to the 2004 edition of _the Hero With A Thousand Faces_ by Joseph Campbell, because it seems to have a lot of bearing on my life and on the chapters of Burning Bright still to come:

"The idea, since forever, has been that story is a conveyance, a vehicle, to use in order to think, to move forward through life. At the end of a life that has meaning, the point is not that one is perfected, but that one will still carry a view of self and the world that is divine—and not just some kind of lazy drift. The point is to have enough stories that guide —that will allow life's closing act to end with one's heart still bright, despite the gales that have passed through it —so that it can be said that one has lived with spiritual audacity."

-The Author

* * *

"It's weird, right?"

"Hmm?"

"Bein' worried about gettin' caught by our own people and not the Empire."

I look up from the cup of tea I'd been staring at. Of course, I want a real drink, but not only am I not allowed to have one, hot tea actually cools down and hydrates the body, so it's a better idea regardless. That's how I rationalize it to myself. I should be drinking tea on a day like this. I don't even want whiskey. Anyone who lives in a hot, dry climate would feel the same. Sometimes, lying to myself is easier than fighting.

Han is watching the street casually, aloof yet vigilant. I can sense his slight nervousness, but I can't see it. At absolute most, he looks like he's people-watching. He sips a neat whiskey absently. I'd practically insisted he get the whiskey. I've told him numerous times that he doesn't have to feel bad for drinking in front of me, because his drinking has no bearing or influence on my own. I wish he could just relax, because when he's worried it will affect me, that's the only time it does. If he didn't worry about it, neither would I. Draws attention to it.

We're at an outdoor table at a café in Mos Eisley. Sitting down here was all that I could come up with when we got off the shuttle. Han wanted to check into a hotel so we could shower, but I just thought about Leia when he said that. I thought about Leia getting out of the shower at that hotel a kilometer from here. I thought about the taste of her clean, warm skin the first time we made love. Han knows better than to push me when I get despondent, and he didn't even ask me why I was panicking. I'd managed to tell him calmly that I needed to collect my thoughts, and while he was in the café ordering us drinks, I took a couple of my pills and lit a soft stick.

When I still don't say anything in reply, Han says, "You feel like fillin' me in on what's goin' on in there?"

I find myself being honest and open with him. Must be the pills. "I lost my virginity in a hotel down the street."

He furrows his brow and looks over his shoulder as if the hotel were close enough to see. "When you and Leia were here?"

"Yeah."

With a suggestion of a smile and a twinkle in his eye, he says, "Didn't know that was when it happened."

I lower my eyes, but smile a little in confirmation.

"I guess there's a lot of layers of stuff here for you."

I sigh tiredly. "My father, my childhood, my aunt and uncle, Obi-Wan, Biggs, Beggar's Canyon, the time I came here with Leia, that stuff later with Camie—"

"Who's Camie?"

"Someone I knew." I can hear the angry edge in my voice, so Han probably can, too. "Someone I…." I shake my head and light another stick.

"What?"

"Someone I hurt."

Han nods knowingly. "Girlfriend?"

"I guess."

"You love her?"

I shrug. "I wanted to. Maybe I did, sort of. But…I don't know how capable of that I was…."

"When were you back here 'later?'"

"I think it was about five years ago." I shrug and blow out smoke. "I don't even really know. That was when the spice was getting really bad."

"How long were you here?"

"Six months, maybe."

"You were _livin' _here?"

I nod.

"Thought you hated it here."

"I was starting to worry about my drug use, and I thought if I came home for awhile it might straighten me out."

"Didn't work, huh?"

I lick my lips, then shake my head gravely.

Han shifts in his chair. He looks strange to me in his Arkansian peasant clothes, but knows better than to act uncomfortable in them. Any discomfort he's displaying is clearly in response to our conversation. "So this ain't the first time you've thought, 'I fucked up, better go to Tatooine with no plan and hope somethin' works out?'"

I smirk.

"Dammit, kid—it's a good thing you're cute, otherwise no one'd put up with you. Alright, let's just rent a speeder and go someplace. You wanna go…you know, back to your farm?"

"Yeah," I say huskily, then nod as I think about it and become sure. "And I want to talk to Huff Darklighter, too. And…maybe we should stop into Anchorhead. And Ben's place, for sure."

"What are we lookin' for again?" Han asks, his tone emphasizing the fact that he's never known what it was we were looking for.

"I'll know when I find it."

"Great."

* * *

Last time I'd been to the Darklighters', I promised I wouldn't come back.

I say something like that to Han when I pull up alongside the house on the outskirts of Anchorhead, and he looks at me sidelong. "What'd you do?"

"What do you think?"

"You were wasted?"

"Yep."

I'd seen Han's surprise when I'd insisted on driving the rented landspeeder, which I assume was because I'm rarely alright enough with any given situation to take that sort of initiative. He hadn't argued. After all, I know where Huff lives, I know every dune and boulder and ancient ravine in this area, and Han doesn't. I wonder why I still haven't told him about the pills. Maybe I want him to think I'm doing better on my own. Or maybe I feel like they count as spice. They're not spice, I repeat to myself. Doctor gave them to me.

I'll tell him, I just need the right opening. Not now.

"He gonna wanna see you?" Han asks, getting out of the speeder.

"Doubt it," I return, killing the engine. I start walking for the front door, but Han calls me back.

"Hey!" He catches up to me as I wait. "You ain't panicking."

I could tell him now. This is my opening. But I don't tell him. "I don't really have time to," I say instead, and it's not actually a lie. I don't, and I know that, and I'm trying to keep moving. To follow this insane and directionless quest through to the end. What else am I supposed to do?

He weighs me with his eyes for a second, brow furrowed. His sense is apprehensive, and cautiously hopeful. "You really okay?"

"Yeah."

He nods carefully.

Huff isn't home. The woman who comes to the door is someone I don't recognize, but is the same kind of motherly country woman as Aunt Beru was. She says she's the housekeeper. The Darklighters have to be the only family south of the Plateau who can afford a housekeeper. Speaking with my native accent, which I don't do anymore, I ask if she knows when he'll be back. She doesn't, but she says we can wait in the den if we want. "Air conditioning," I murmur to Han. He nods in approval.

The housekeeper brings us tea, water, and some bantha cheese and bread, which I pick at disinterestedly until Han reminds me I didn't eat breakfast, either, so I eat most of it to appease him. A big part of me just wants to get him off my back, but I know I also feel better when he's proud of the progress I'm making. I've hardly eaten anything for years—just enough to keep going, I guess, though Han says he doesn't get how it's even enough for that—and since he and I took off together, I've become increasingly aware of how hard it is for me to eat normally. At some point, I think I stopped feeling hungry altogether, so without that sense, it's no wonder I think I don't want to eat, or that I don't need to. I'd said something vague about it to Han a couple days ago, and he said that I just need to retrain my body. I guess. I try to eat whenever he does, and I really feel like it's no use. I'm still never hungry. It's not helping.

Twenty minutes into our visit, I sense Huff coming down the stairs and I stand. I feel nervous and I want to take another pill and smoke a soft stick, but instead I just try to breathe deeply. I turn to face the door. His beard has turned grey, but otherwise he looks like the same old Huff. I forget about my brown hair and eyes until he says, "Luke?" like he's not even sure.

"Yeah," I breathe. "I'm sorry I didn't—"

"Com ahead? Never have, why would you start now?" He sounds beyond annoyed, maybe even angry or offended, but there's the faintest hint of familiar affection in his voice. He has known me my whole life, after all. "You clean?"

"What?"

"I told you never to come back unless you were clean. Are you clean?"

I nod, and completely unexpected pride glows in my chest. "Over a year."

His smile is hesitant, like he's not sure if he should believe me. And why should he? But it's true, so I meet his gaze unflinching, to prove that I'm not lying, and to prove I have the stolidity of someone who's sober. "Good," he says, at least somewhat convinced. "Why're your eyes brown?"

"Long story."

"You're in trouble again."

I sigh and sit back down. "Yeah…but I'm just here to talk. I wanted to ask you some things. Oh, this is Han."

Han shakes hands with Huff, casually but with respect. Then we all sit awkwardly for a second while I try to figure out how to gather my thoughts. At last, Huff says to him, "I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge you at first—Luke has a habit of bringing girls here he's gotten in trouble, and I wasn't really sure what to make of you."

Han grins in open amusement. "You mean like Leia? I ain't pregnant."

Huff barely smiles. "Neither was the second one. You looking for Camie?" he asks, turning to me, while I'm still trying to figure out what to say about why I _am_ here.

I look up in alarm. "Um…no. Well…. Why, is she alright?"

Huff sighs. "Last I heard of her was about two years ago. I bailed her out of jail in Mos Espa. She robbed someone to buy powder."

Looking nervously away, I feel my heart pound and my breath quicken. This is all my fault. "And…you haven't heard anything since?"

"I let her stay here again until she detoxed, then she took off early one morning without a word. Figured she was either embarrassed, or decided she wasn't ready to be sober. "

"Or both." I know exactly how she feels.

"You should apologize to her, Luke."

I almost growl, "For what?" But I know what I have to apologize for better than Huff does. That growl, if I spoke it, would not come from me—it would come from the defense mechanism persona I've been wearing for years to cover up how much I care about things, about everything, about everyone, about people like Camie who I can't keep myself from hurting, and so instead of trying to fix things, I pretend to be so angry and jaded and self-involved that I don't even understand what I've done wrong. But I know. That's why I left her. So I couldn't do it anymore, at the very least. So now, instead of growling, I just look at the floor. "I think about her," I admit huskily into the silence. "I'm sorry…I'm sorry I made you take care of her when I should have been the one—"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Huff shake his head. "It's not because I feel inconvenienced, you know. It's because I didn't like seeing either of you like that. I knew you when you were babies. I'd rather'd taken care of her then make her figure it out on her own. Wish you would have stayed, too."

"I know…." I cast a quick, uncertain glance at Han, whose eyes meet mine, and I draw courage from the connection. "I'm doing…a lot better," I say sincerely, and finally raise my head to Huff again.

He smiles. "I can tell. You actually look younger than you did five years ago. You ever…get in touch with the kids?"

I smile brighter than I have all day. "Yeah…I've actually been staying with them. And Leia."

He raises his eyebrows in excitement. "Leia! Are you—"

I feel myself blush and say, hurrying before he can ask because I don't even want to hear the words, "We're just friends."

"You two are family—"

I clench my teeth and look away in the fraction of a second he pauses.

"—She gave you kids; you'll always be family because of that."

"I know, Huff. But we're not together." I sigh, trying to stay calm. "She's really helped a lot, with my recovery. I couldn't have done it without her. Or Han." I smile at my silent companion briefly. "I've known them both since I left home. They're…they're the best friends I've ever had. Well…them and…."

Huff's expression is both sad and appreciative as he clasps my shoulder. "I know he's proud of you, wherever he is."

I doubted that. I don't know if Biggs and I would have two words to say to each other after the way I'd lived most of my adult life. But I silently thanked Huff for saying so, nonetheless.

"_I'm_ proud of you, kiddo." He laughs under his breath. "_Listen_ to me!—you're not a kid anymore. You're, what, twenty-nine?"

"Thirty."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "Thirty. Biggs'd be thirty-four. Hell, Gavin's a teenager. You know where he is right now?"

"Where?"

"Beggar's Canyon."

I smile nostalgically in spite of myself.

"We should go down there, show the kids a thing or two," interjects Han.

My smile broadens, then fades. "Huff…I'm not really here…just to check in. I guess…I guess I _did_ want to apologize for what happened. I wasn't okay, for a really long time, and I'm sorry I dragged you into it—"

"Are you in some kinda program where—"

"No, nothing like that. I'm just trying to figure some things out. To figure out what happened, I guess. What started happening before I was even born."

I expect from him the reaction that Han gives me when I say something "cryptic and fucking delusional" as he once put it, but instead I see the smile begin to fade from Huff's face. He knows something, and seeing that, knowing that, I take heart. I'm not crazy. I'm onto something.

"Huff," I ask lowly, leaning in closer to him, "Did you know my father?"


	16. Just an Echo

Huff sighs heavily, but with trembling restraint. "The way you're asking that…it's not like when you were little, when you would ask people about him. You know, don't you?"

I swallow. "Yes. I didn't know if you did."

He pauses a long time before replying, looking around the room, gathering his thoughts. "Owen told me, after you and Biggs got close. You were over here a lot, and he wanted me to understand why we needed to keep such a close eye on you. I know you think we were too strict, Luke, but we were scared he'd figure it out and come for you—or send someone for you. After all that with Owen and Beru…being killed, and you disappearing—that's where I thought you were. I thought they came and got you. Next thing I hear, a couple weeks after getting word that Biggs was shot down, was that you were public enemy number one." He smiles a little. "I mean, I wish you and he never got involved in all that, but at least I knew then that you were holding your own out there. Thought you were a prisoner or something, and I find out you're the one giving the Empire hell, not the other way around. I still worried about you, but as long as they were still looking for you, I knew you were probably okay."

It had never occurred to me at the time that being at the top of the Empire's most-wanted list would make the people back home worry about me. If anything, I thought it might make some of them scared of me, make them think I was dangerous. A radical. An anarchist. A terrorist. A murderer. Well, wasn't I? I thought of the time I'd brought Leia here, only months after Yavin, and acted like the only things that had changed was my planet of residence, the fact that Biggs was dead, and the fact that I was in love. And to Huff, in his eyes, I was a fighter and a survivor in a way he'd never known I could be. "What…did Owen say to you?" I asked huskily when I'd gone over it all in my head. "When he told you?"

"That…that you were his step-brother's kid, and his step-brother had left home when he was a little boy to be trained as a Jedi on Coruscant. No one talked about Jedi back then, Luke. It made everyone really uncomfortable to acknowledge what happened to them, and I think some of us weren't even sure if the stories were true. Besides, the Empire discouraged any mention of the Jedi. It didn't affect my life much, but I remember feeling weird about it when your uncle said that word, Jedi. He didn't want you to know anything about them, since they say it's hereditary, their powers."

I nodded. "Yeah, it is." My eyes lowered, I made a choice sullenly, and levitated the cheese knife off the table, letting it hang there in the air. "My son can do it, too. But he doesn't know it yet. Like I didn't."

Huff paled and watched the knife, too startled to say anything.

Han smirked. "Creeps me out, too."

I lowered the knife gently. I was so out of practice that even little things like that, when they were deliberate, took something out of me. Though my breath and heart rate were normal, I felt like I'd just run for half an hour. I took a drink of water. "Was that all he said?" I asked Huff.

"No…he told me more about Anakin. He told me that he was still alive but not too many people knew that. That you didn't know that and I wasn't supposed to tell you. That he'd turned into some kind of monster who worked as the Emperor's right hand. Pretty easy to figure out who he meant. All the Galaxy knows who Vader is."

"Was," I murmur darkly. _I killed him_.

"Was, right."

"So you never met him? When he lived here…I mean, you two must be about the same age…."

"No…his mom lived somewhere else before she married your grandpa. I don't remember ever seeing your father."

"Owen wouldn't talk about him, or his mom. Beru would, a little, but she knew she wasn't supposed to, so I never got much out of her—"

"Owen was a controlling, manipulative jerk," Huff said vehemently. His tone and manner not changing he said, "I know I shouldn't talk that way about the dead, or about your family, Luke, but the way he treated you and Beru…. I should have said more about it at the time. I should have done something about it. I know he hit you, and I'm sorry."

Him saying something wouldn't have changed anything. "It's not your fault."

"I know, but—you could have been over here more, maybe."

I smiled a little. "I don't see how that's possible. I almost lived here until Biggs went away."

"Yeah, well…. Owen thought he was keeping you safe by keeping you on that short leash, and by trying to control your thoughts by acting the way he did when you said certain things. I mean, that's what abuse is, you know. It's when someone doesn't let you have your own feelings or thoughts, and tries to punish you for having them, to make you feel bad for not being totally in line with their expectations, until you're the one apologizing. It's no way to grow up. But he was completely terrified that something would happen to you, that Vader'd come for you, or you'd run off and get yourself into trouble, or that you'd start taking to Ben Kenobi too much—I guess the last one happened, didn't it?"

Getting close to Ben was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and that remained true even though I knew of his dishonesty, even though I blamed him for molding me into a tool to kill Vader, even though I hated him for not being honest with me about mine and Leia's relationship from the start. Ben had at least given me the courage and skills I needed to set myself free. After being raised by Owen Lars, it felt like finally being able to breathe after eighteen years of suffocation. "What did he say, about why Vader couldn't find me? Did he think he'd, I dunno, hurt me or something?"

"I think he was more afraid that Vader would want to raise you. Turn you into a monster like him. And he was worried that if you talked to Ben the same thing would happen—since Ben used to be a Jedi."

"Ben was Vader's teacher, before…."

"Oh." He says it as if it explains a lot.

I'd never been sure if Owen had known, or how much he knew, if his treatment of me had been out of concern or just his natural tendencies. But that wasn't mutually exclusive. He might have treated me the same no matter what. "Your uncle loves you," Aunt Beru, the peacekeeper, would always say, "And he's strict because he worries about you."

I knew he loved me. He was resentful of having to be my caregiver, and he showed it, but he still loved me. If I'd been home when the troops came and executed them, I know Owen would have stood between me and a blaster bolt without a second thought. That's why I never ran away, no matter how bad it got. I couldn't bear to upset or disrespect him and Beru after how much they'd done for me. They'd never had to adopt me. They put themselves in danger doing it, and Owen never let me forget that I wasn't even actually related to him, but they couldn't have kids, and Beru once told me that I was sent to them to make up for that. She was very thankful for me, and Owen guarded me jealously—too jealously, not even giving me the freedom to choose my own way because it might mean losing me.

"The official claim was always that your father was dead. Owen only really mentioned what really happened that one time," continues Huff. "Like I said. It was stuff you just didn't talk about back then. I guess it's safe to do it, now—but now it never comes up."

"Do you know where my grandma was from? It must have been Tatooine—"

"Owen didn't even tell you that?"

"I got in trouble pretty much whenever I mentioned my parents or grandparents."

Huff shakes his head in dismay. "I'm so sorry. Yeah, I actually remember when she moved up here. It was a year or two before we had Biggs. Didn't really know her, but she always seemed like a nice, gentle person. Shmi. She was from Mos Espa."

I look at Han, who immediately responds, "Do we have to go up there, or something?"

"I think so."

He shrugs. "Alright," he says tiredly, "Let's go to Mos Espa."

Huff put his hand on my wrist, and I turn to face him again, expecting him to caution me about something relating to my grandmother, but he says, "Luke, try to check in on Camie while you're there, if you can find her. I worry."

My mouth goes dry and I feel cold suddenly. She's probably the last person I want to see again. But I nod. I promise.

We stay the night at the Darklighters'. I avoid Gavin—a fourteen-year-old who looks like Biggs is a little too hard for me, besides which I know I must have turned into someone completely different in his eyes after the last time I'd been here. When he was little, he thought Biggs and I must have hung the moons and stars. If I hadn't ruined everything when I brought Camie here, so strung out myself I barely even remember the whole fiasco, he might still feel the same, especially since he races Beggar's Canyon himself these days, and his brother and I were the first to thread the Stone Needle. Then, at least he knows what I really am. Disillusioning children, however, is one of the worst feelings in the universe. You want them to keep believing in limitless possibility, in goodness and magic and the continual growth of the soul. I don't want to be taken for anything other than my worst—but I also don't want to be the cause of any child losing hope.

Biggs' room is still the same. At this point, it probably always will be. There are no traces here of me, of Leia, of Camie, or of any others who may have used this room as a guest room in the twelve years since Biggs' death. Han takes the actual, proper guest room. I want to be alone. I sit on the floor in the dark, in the center of the room, and for the first time in years and years, I meditate. I do it because, when I find just the right frequency, I can still feel him here, his aura attached to the objects he touched and thought about. It's not a presence, really—he's not haunting the room. It's just an echo, or something like the smell of someone on the sheets they've slept in. There is something of his energy still vibrating here. Of course I missed it the other two times I'd stayed in this room since his death—the first time, I'd been both barely trained and extremely distracted, and the second, I'd been spiced and unable to get anything but a clumsy, momentary hold on my extra senses. Now that I've noticed it, it's obvious, and though feeling him here is painful, it's also the closest to getting to see him again I'll ever get.

"Things didn't exactly go like we planned, did they?" I whisper, opening my eyes to the darkness.

Biggs doesn't answer, because he isn't really here.

In the morning, after I shower and obediently eat something, we say goodbye and thank you to Huff, then start heading north in the rented speeder. "Be faster to take a shuttle. We could be there in twenty minutes. Driving there's gonna take all day," Han says.

About twelve hours. But I don't want to go back to Mos Eisley, which is a pretty long drive, anyway, and the only transport we could get from Anchorhead would be overland like the speeder. "We'll take turns driving," I say.

"There anywhere to stop on the way?"

"There's Bestine, but that's only about two hours away from here. Then about two hours before Mos Espa, there's Mos Taike." I don't mention I've never actually been that far from home on-planet. My uncle never let me go further than Anchorhead on my own, and no further than Mos Eisley with him. When I came back alone, I'd never thought to travel around, just stuck to the towns I was familiar with.

"That's a whole lot of nothing in the middle."

"Welcome to Tatooine."

Han gives me that look, the one that means I'm being a smart-ass, and he's going to put up with it for now, but he still wants me to know he's on to my banthashit. "So, you gonna tell me what happened with that Camie girl, or do I need to fill in the details myself?"

Sitting beside him in the passenger seat, I sigh. "No…no, I guess I can tell you."

"Give us something to do, anyway."

I slump against the faux nerfhide of the upholstery. "Where do I even start?"


	17. Camie

_Note: As usual, I do my research, and things that are cannon are intentionally so, and things that aren't are intentionally not, and thus shouldn't be considered errors._

Five years ago, Mos Eisley, Tatooine….

Every time I've been to Tatooine, I've thought it was going to be the last time. Maybe now I finally realize that there isn't really going to be a last time, that it's always going to be home, and, no matter what, I'm going to keep coming up with reasons to go back, even if it's usually just that I need to be reminded why I left. Put things in perspective. Reset.

I guess I'd gotten tired of Coronet. It had stopped being fun. Money went so fast, and my pension wasn't really enough to live on. After I gave up on holding down a job, I had to rely on other kids to pick up the slack. I mean, we all did that. Five of us sharing a studio apartment, or crashing other people's places, or making do on the streets for a few nights, or sleeping on the beach during the day and taking uppers to stay at the clubs until dawn, or finding rich kids who were hungry for a change, who would come party with us for a few days and pick up the tab, only to go back to their parents when things started getting hard.

That wasn't what I was doing-running home because things got hard. I just needed a change. My usual crowd was looking too familiar. A few of them knew who I was. And I think I was hoping that it would be easier to lay off the spice a little if I had a quiet, familiar place to be for awhile, a place where I knew everything about getting by except how and where to find pushers. I could find out, and I probably would, but still. Detox a little. Find other ways to spend my time. I was afraid I was starting to get dependent on it, and I didn't really feel that great. I didn't mind being a mess, but if I got addicted bad enough that I couldn't go without it, that'd just be one more thing I'd have to worry about.

But I wasn't addicted to it. I mean, I got cravings. But they went away after five days or a week of not smoking, if I was broke or too exhausted to get too spiced, or if I was taking a break because I had a cold or something. And then when I went back to the clubs and the parties I didn't feel compelled to get high right away. But I always did sooner or later. I mean, why not, who cares? It was fun. Made me stop worrying. I wasn't hurting anyone. It's not like there was anything morally wrong with it.

I looked a little worse for wear when I got off the shuttle. I'd thought about taking the commuter ferry, since it was so much cheaper, but it just takes too long. Days and days I'd be thinking about Leia sleeping beside me on our bunk with our first son inside her, flying back to rejoin the Alliance, everything changed since the day we'd left, returning home a couple with a baby coming instead of the two confused kids who we'd been only days before. I didn't want to think about Leia. I just wanted to get home, to stand in the sunshine and see if it cheered me up at all. I missed the warmth. It rained too much on Corellia. And that ocean, admittedly, would never stop being weird.

So instead I got off the shuttle after a quick two day jump, unbathed, exhausted, wearing the same rumpled clothes I'd worn when I left Corellia, blinking painfully in a light so much brighter than I was used to anymore. I immediately stripped off my leather jacket and stuffed it in my satchel. Despite being black, the tunic I wore was lose and airy and let the breeze blow through. It felt amazing, the warmth and the cooler wind. For the first time in a long time, I missed my longer hair. The wind playing with it had always been one of my favorite feelings. Hopefully the heat would help take the last edge off my hangover and spice withdrawal. It had been almost three days since I used, but my head still hurt a little. And the circles under my eyes were pretty bad. But I was hungry again, which was something. Fucking spice. This could really screw me up if I wasn't careful.

First thing I did was to find some real Tatooian food. Spicy root stew with chunks of bantha meat, served to me in a disposable bowl from a cart in the Mos Eisley afternoon market. It smelled amazing. On Corellia, I'd always found myself eating prepackaged junk or decadent gourmet food the rich kids bought me. All I really wanted was something homemade and genuine.

I allowed myself to speak with my full accent instead of suppressing it as I had become accustomed to in the Core, and yet the woman who served me my dinner asked me where I was from. Feeling myself blush, a reaction I was no longer used to having, I replied, "Um. Here. Just haven't been home in awhile."

"Careful," she warned me with a teasing smile, "Sounds like you're turning into a city boy."

Simultaneous pride and worry washed over me as I took my food. I had fought so hard to not be taken for a simple farm boy, and yet I knew that a great deal of the changes in me were not for the better, and the fact that I seemed to be unable to return to my old way of speaking despite my best efforts was not encouraging. I reminded myself that the woman couldn't see into my soul, that she was just making a joke about my losing my accent, which I had done intentionally, anyway.

But the anxiety her comment stirred up made me feel like I need a drink. Or a stick. Or something. So much for sobering up for awhile. What did it matter, anyway? So after I ate, I grabbed a small bottle of whiskey from an import shop-the only alcohol made on Tatooine is moonshine for personal use-and went in search of a hotel.

The cheapest place was always the one at the south of town, but I couldn't bring myself to even walk in its direction. I lost my virginity in that hotel, on the run with Leia, back...six years ago.

_Six?_

Fuck, had it really been six years?

No, more. I was twenty-five. Already. Somehow.

Ben was six, then. And the other one…he was three.

He probably talked in whole sentences. He probably….

I hoped he was alright. I never, ever wanted to see him. But I did worry about him. Hoped he was…well. Normal.

I didn't know anything about him. At all.

Except his name was Anakin.

I'd just found that out a handful of months ago, skimming an article about Leia getting sworn in as President of the New Republic. I usually avoided news that had anything to do with her or Han, but sometimes I got drawn in when the news made the farm-boy-turned-revolutionary in me swell with pride. Leia. President of the New Republic. I'd even smiled when I saw the headline, just a little. She deserved it. And the Galaxy deserved her. I mean, that's why I'd voted for her a month before. Leia was the only thing that could have made me overcome that hangover and depression on that day enough to fill out a ballot. I'd wanted her to win.

But then, reading the article-I didn't dare watch the holo or the live coverage, just read an article the next day-the reporter had mentioned him. "President Organa-Solo-"

_Solo._ I'd known they'd been married a year ago. But I'd never seen her name written that way. I actually never saw it written that way thereafter, either. She went by Organa alone, and had when we'd been married, too, not Organa-Skywalker. The reporter had probably made an error. One which made me clench my teeth.

"President Organa-Solo has two children from a previous marriage to retired Alliance Commander Luke Skywalker: Ben, age five, and Anakin, two."

My heart had skipped a beat as I read the name over and over. Anakin. She _named _him after_…him…_?

I had a son named Anakin Skywalker.

After that monster.

Since that day, I'd wondered a lot what had possessed her to call him that. The only thing I could come up with was some sort of forgiveness. Or second chance. Some abstract, well-meaning but badly misguided attempt to redeem his memory. The memory of my father. Ben's biological father. Leia's….

Someone who never, ever could deserve a gesture like that. Pain shot up from my right wrist at the memory, and I clenched the hand that would never really be mine into a fist.

She meant well, I reminded myself. She has a pure heart.

And that made it worse.

I clutched the whiskey tighter and went into a boarding house. When I asked the Rodian receptionist about prices and availability, I stumbled over common Huttese words in my own speech, though I understood her fine. I guess I could have spoken to her in Basic, which she was no doubt used to humans doing. Looking amused, she asked me where I was from, too. Fantastic. I couldn't imagine what I must have sounded like. No longer a country boy, nowhere near a Core-Worlder. A man without a homeland or accent, who couldn't speak properly to anyone's ears, and not only in one, but two languages. I took my room key sullenly.

The room was fine; it was better, actually, than I was used to, since my money was worth a lot more on Tatooine than it was on Corellia, especially in Coronet. If I wanted to go out to Anchorhead and stay in the little boarding house there, I could get even better for the same price, though with the added discomfort of knowing everyone in town. It wasn't something I really wanted to get myself into, though every so often I entertained the fantasy of finding Fixer and punching him in the self-satisfied face. As a teenager, I'd had neither the skill or the nerve. Now, the only things that kept me back were the desire for anonymity and solitude, and the worry that all of the violence I'd engaged in during the war had irrevocably tarnished a soul that was already dark from birth. It had been forever since I'd held a weapon aside from the knife I kept on me, and I'd never even had to use that. Fist fights were rare enough in my life to be almost nonexistent. And for the past two years I hadn't even had to protect myself from bounty hunters and Imperial troops. I wasn't a fighter, anymore. Not like that. I was dark enough already without it.

So Fixer could keep his stupid, smug smile, and I'd stay out of his way. Though it did give me a measure of enjoyment knowing that if I so chose, I'd be able to take him in a fight, now. Even though I had spent the past year laying on a beach, I'd always be a Jedi at some level, capable of what a Jedi was capable of, for better or for worse.

After a quick water shower and getting dressed in a clean set of clothes-though water was expensive on Tatooine, sonic showers had a vastly greater initial cost than plumbing, so most hotel owners didn't bother, and just charged their patrons for the water they used-I opened the whiskey and took a pull. It was alright; I'd had a lot better, but it would do. It's not as if I was picky.

The sand-colored buildings outside my window were starting to glow with golden light, the mountains beyond darkening to purple. Drawn by the desert sunset, I opened the window to let the evening wind in and sat on the sill, nursing the bottle until it was more or less dark out. Then, feeling tipsy, energized, and strangely lonely-I guess I was used to large throngs of inebriated youth-I decided to go find a cantina. Maybe someone to bring home.

I steered clear of Chalmun's, where I'd first met Han. I considered the Krayt Dragon Lounge, but it was too high-profile, if you could call somewhere in Mos Eisley that. High-profile for Tatooine, anyway. Famous bounty hunters frequented that place, and though there wasn't a bounty on me anymore, I didn't feel like dealing with that sort of situation. There were a few places that had opened up since the last time I'd been through, but I wasn't feeling _that _energized, not enough to test out new places. Woodoo Dunes it was, I decided, putting on my jacket against the increasingly cold night air. Probably the most rundown, seedy bar in Mos Eisley, but also one of the most relaxed, usually. A complete dive. That was all I really wanted, especially after the Treasure Ship Row club scene.

The nice thing about cantinas in Mos Eisley is that, due to the high crime rate as well as the huge amount of passers-through, no one really cares who you are or what you're doing there. On Corellia, I'd constantly fought to not be recognized, unless I thought my reputation would work to my advantage in some very specific, localized way. Here, it didn't even matter, not with the New Republic in power. None of the beings at the Dunes gave me a second glance. If any of them did recognize me, it didn't seem to matter to them. The bartender filled a plastic tumbler with ale for me, and I passed him a chip, telling him to keep the change. Even when I was in a terrible mood, I always tipped.

A quick visual survey of the place didn't turn up much interesting. Mostly a lot of non-humans, and while I wasn't adverse to alien company, I wasn't really attracted to the ones who weren't at least bipedal primates without much fur. But a few human and near-human females dressed in dancers' costumes fraternized with the clientele. I didn't understand why they were always girls, and almost always human or twi'lek. In a place like this, with customers this diverse, you'd think there'd be some boys, and some other species. Maybe human and twi'lek females were considered to have a more universal appeal than most other options, I thought, watching a very pale blue twi'lek, who looked barely old enough to be out this late, talk with an unusually large ithorian male across the bar from me. He didn't seem to be interested; when she felt my eyes on her, the twi'lek looked up and flirted with me through dark eyelashes lining large, deep burgundy eyes. My conscience insisted to me momentarily that she was too young, that by accepting her advances I was contributing to both her own delinquency and my own moral corruption. But I found myself smiling at her nonetheless, and she slinked up to me, her movements fluid and suggestive, while the dimples on her cheeks when she returned my smile spoke to an innocence which had yet to be shaken by her wanton life, and perhaps never would be. "I'm Rella," she said in Basic, but with the accent of someone who was used to speaking Huttese.

"Achuta," I said. _Hello_.

"Do you speak Huttese?" she asked, her smile growing.

"Tagwa," I answered. Then smiled bashfully as I stumbled over the next few words. "I'm out of practice. Eeth mee dunkee gunko." _But I'm glad to meet you._

She continued in Basic, so I decided, fighting back embarrassment, that I probably shouldn't try the Huttese anymore. She asked me where I was from, again, and I ignored my exasperation in favor of continuing our flirtation. Here, I said again. I'm Tatooian. I'm from the salt flats near Anchorhead. In the Wastes. Here. Here. Yes, I grew up on a farm. Here. Just a hundred kilometers east….

I changed the subject in frustration. She didn't seem to believe me. She said she was from Mos Espa and had lived in Mos Eisley for almost a local year and had never heard anyone talk like me. Had never seen anyone dress like me, in nondescript black linen. Her childish questions were growing annoying. She thought I was exotic, I guess. Confusing, but exciting. I felt like I was being looked at with a microscope.

I bought her a drink, and another for myself. I felt out of place, upset, not comforted by being home like I had wanted and expected. I started thinking about just going back to the hotel. This was part of why I'd left Coronet. I didn't like this anymore. The social games. I was exhausted.

I managed to get Rella talking about herself, which she did in accented but unhalting Basic, quickly and excitedly like the late adolescent she was. She was stunningly beautiful, but not great at her job. For the moment, though, I much preferred her rambling to any more questions.

"Rella," I heard a human woman's voice say gently if somewhat patronizingly as a figure moved to my left. "Let me talk to him."

"I was here first," she said with teenage indignation.

"I know him. Please."

It was only the whiskey that had kept me recognizing the voice before I turned and saw the face. And then I was suddenly captivated by delicate blue eyes, soft brown waves, and fair skin that, though mostly kept out of the sun all these years, had a dusting of freckles I had always thought were lovely. "Camie Marstrap." As I said her name, I couldn't even decide what emotion my own voice carried-annoyance, fascination, confusion, dismissal, or seduction. The close friendship we'd had as children had been utterly destroyed as she'd entered her teens and become obsessed with Fixer Loneozner, and though the two of them had prayed on me for sport, I hadn't reacted completely passively-I had managed the occasional strike back at them, as well. I'd never really understood the reasons for her sudden dislike for me. Our friendship had been built mostly on the fact that we were the same age and our folks were friends, it's true, and little if at all on any actual similarities or affinity we had for each other, but I had never done anything to her to instigate her bullying of me. Biggs said they did it because I was the easiest target, and stupid people like having someone to pick on so that they can feel better about themselves. Camie wasn't the brightest person I knew, but I still felt that she was better than that. Maybe Fixer wasn't, though, and Camie would have done anything to win his approval. That was the worst part. Fixer was nothing but a dumb brute, and in my mind had started to draw Camie in for no reason and out of absolutely nowhere, all of a sudden, one day when she and I were fourteen. He took her from me. He took her from me and turned her into someone horrible and I hated him for it, and I hated her for feeling that being with him made her somebody. Because that's how she acted.

All of that rushed through my head quickly and I clenched my teeth. Apparently I still held a grudge, after all this time, after all I'd been through that had taken me away from this. After all the adventure and all the suffering and Leia and Ben and Vader, I was still mad at Camie Marstrap.

And here she was.

"What are you doing home, Wormie?" she asked, and I couldn't decide if her leering was playful and ironic, or if she really hadn't matured past eighteen.

I swallowed the rest of my drink. I had really been hoping to never be called that again. Regarding her dancer's costume, trying to focus on what she was wearing instead of the admittedly gorgeous body it did little to conceal, I returned, "What are you doing at the Dunes? Fixer know you have a _job_?"

The sharpness and twinkle left her eyes as she sat tiredly beside me. "Buy me a drink."

It sounded like an order. And since I wanted so badly to hear what had gone wrong between Camie and that jerk, I obeyed.

"We're not together," she confided after a moment of silence.

I nodded. "I thought you were getting married."

"We were."

No further explanation was provided, and I figured I'd get it out of her later if there was more to say. For now, I was satisfied. Camie could be terrible, but she was far, far better than he ever deserved. And she didn't deserve to be subject to his tyranny for the rest of her life.

I noticed as we talked that she'd already been drinking. And there was also a deadness to her eyes that I recognized. I wondered what she was using. I wondered if she had any more.

"So you're back."

"For now," I answered.

She smiled. "Where's your hair?"

I returned it. "Gone."

"Yeah." She pet my head, my stubbly hair. "It's good to see you, you know. I didn't think I ever would again."

"I try to stay away from Anchorhead. Bad memories."

"We were pretty awful to you, weren't we?"

I shrugged, but deep down, it meant a lot to me that she was even aware of it. It would be worse if she wasn't. An admission is like half an apology. "It was a long time ago."

She nodded. "Yeah. I don't really go back there, either. I don't really want to see…any of them, really."

"That bad?"

"It's just not…who I am anymore."

"Yeah…." Obviously. It's a pretty long way, despite what some people may say, from provincial tart to cantina girl.

"I haven't heard anything about you in the news since the end of the war."

"I resigned."

"I can see that, Commander."

I hated being famous enough that even Camie knew my old rank.

"Your ex is president now, huh?"

I sighed. "Sure is."

"She's pretty. I saw her holo in the news."

I nodded without answering. Leia's beauty was not really something I felt the need to comment on.

"Your little boys look a lot like you. Especially the blonde one."

I suddenly felt like I might be sick. He did? _Blonde_? I held my empty tumbler too tightly and looked anywhere but at Camie. Gods, why did she even want to talk about this?

"If it's a sore subject…."

"We're divorced," I said carefully, doing everything I could to keep the panic out of my voice. "It was messy. I just…."

"Sorry, I saw him in the holos from his mom's inauguration, and I…I didn't know…."

Nodding tersely, I set down my tumbler and pushed it closer to the bartender so he could refill it. I thought of several things I could answer her with before deciding to change the subject. "How long you lived in Mos Eisley?"

"Three years. There's no future in Anchorhead if you'e not taking over your folks' farm or shop."

"I'm well aware," I said with a bit of an ironic smirk.

"I know. I guess I figured this was better. It's more interesting, anyway. And I can support myself."

The subtext being that she didn't need Fixer if she was here. Well, she might not have picked the most reputable-or safe-profession in the world, but she was right to get away from him and try to make it on her own, and I was proud of her. Mos Eisley was twice as far as kids born in the Wastes usually got. "You like it?"

"I like it better than what I had before. It's not always…it's not always great." She shifted anxiously, her finger drumming the bar.

I knew that kind of anticipation. My heart pounded as I started to feel it, too. "What is it?"

She looked at me suddenly. "Nothing-"

"No, I mean, what are you on? Are you holding?"

Paling, she looked away. "What are you talking about?"

"Camie, I'm not stupid. And I'm not gonna tell anyone. Actually…I was wondering if I could…maybe get some…."

Her beaming smile was probably as unexpected to me as my admission was to her. "Luke, _you_-?" She seemed excited. "I have crash n' burn if you want…."

I'd done crash n' burn and it was exactly like it sounded. You could take it any number of ways, but the kids in Coronet usually snorted it in a powder. It made you feel totally energized, enthusiastic, happy, and confident for about an hour, then you crashed and started wanting more. The weird thing about it was that after you came down from what you interpreted as the high, there was still a strange lingering residue of it for three days. I guess that was the burn, or more like a glow that you didn't realize was there until it went away. Some people liked that part. I thought it was terrible, worse than a hangover if less uncomfortable, because you felt deceptively sober until you actually _were_ sober, and looked back, and saw what an idiot you'd been since you came off the spice. Three days of feeling out of it and making poor choices for an hour of feeling amazing. Well, I guess it didn't have to be only an hour. You could always just keep doing it.

I nodded, taking my jacket off the back of the barstool. Chances were that no one would be bothered by us doing spice in the cantina, but it was technically illegal, and besides…being alone with Camie, both of us high…that sounded great.

The feel of the drug getting absorbed through your air passages is a little rough at first, then it cools, and numbs, and then it starts hitting your brain. Your eyes water a little; you might have to sit down a minute and get your bearings. Then you feel fantastic. You're wide awake, cheerful, not at all self-conscious or shy. You laugh, make jokes, speak frankly and openly and say only nice things. Of course, it doesn't last. The comedown can be rough. Crash. Burn.

The crash and burn were both very far from my admittedly hazy mind as I sat back, swallowing the tickling powder that had found its way into my numbed throat, handing the straw to Camie at my right. She took it, closing one nostril, holding the straw to the other, and leaning over one of the lines of pink dust on her transparasteel top table. I checked to make sure I didn't have any powder on my nose. To make sure none of the drug went to waste, I picked up traces of it from the table with my finger and pressed it to my gums.

I looked at Camie in that red silk…dress. There was barely enough of it to call it a dress, but I didn't have another word for it. The neckline plunged between her small but perfect breasts and continued nearly as far as it could before it ran out of torso. She was so thin, thinner than I'd ever seen her. I could make out ribs where her fair skin was exposed.

She looked at me, wiping her nose as she sat back, her delicate blue eyes watering, the light in them dimming. "What?"

"What?" I returned.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"You look sad."

Sad? No. I was at the beginning of a crash n' burn high. I was incapable of sadness. But I might have been kind of wistful. Nostalgic. Worried about the girl I'd grown up with. Longing for something I couldn't place. "I'm not sad." No self-consciousness. I said what I meant. "You're very beautiful."

She smiled an easy, inebriated smile that never found its way into her eyes. "I always knew you thought so. Why didn't you ever say so before?"

I couldn't be sad, but I could be angry. "_What?_ With Fixer already making my life a living hell? He would have killed me if I'd tried anything."

When she blinked, her eyes spilled over with tears. I already knew at the time that after one becomes dependent on crash n' burn, its euphoric qualities alter into a simple enhancement of whatever feelings may come up. "I had a miscarriage," Camie said hurriedly.

It wasn't difficult for me to keep up with her spice-fueled mood swings, considering I was just as high as she was. "I'm sorry," I said, fully meaning it, thinking-without fear, for once-of my own children, and knowing how hurt I'd be to lose them, even before they'd been born. Knowing Anakin existed was hard for me. Learning he'd ceased to exist would have been infinitely harder. Unbearable. "When?"

"I dunno," she wiped her tears away, smudging dark eye makeup. "A year after you left, I guess. I didn't mean to get pregnant, of course, but I was excited. Fixer…wasn't."

"You guys were young-"

"No, Luke…. He _really_ didn't want it. He made sure…." She wiped her eyes again, then busied herself cutting more lines on the table. "Do you ever see your boys?"

"Leia has sole custody," I said, instead of really answering.

"How long has it been since you saw them?"

Why were we talking about me? I didn't want to talk about me. "Awhile."

"They must miss you. I bet you're a good dad."

Smiling ironically, I picked up the straw. "Really?" I asked, then leaned over one of the newly cut lines. When I'd finished, I leveled my eyes at her darkly as I passed the straw. "Why do you think Leia has sole custody?"

She was silent for a moment, trying to understand the progression of events in my life with me volunteering so little. "How long have you been using?"

What counts as the beginning? The first time I let spice enter my once-pure body? Or the day I realized I rarely went a full week anymore? The first time I got a hard-to-ignore craving? What about alcohol? Did that count? And if that counted, was the the first drink I'd ever had, at eighteen with Han, trying to bond with him so I wouldn't miss Biggs so much, or was it the first time I spent the better part of a week drunk enough to barely think about Leia's huge dark eyes?

"Awhile," I answered. Same answer. Same question. Didn't matter. It was all a blur, anyway, sinking into my sparklingly dull mind with each line of crash n' burn, losing its relevance and frame of context, time, place, feeling…. "You?"

"Since the baby," she said softly, and did a line.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, and I was. And I understood it wasn't about the baby for her. Not really. Not that losing her child hadn't been hard. But it was everything else that memory brought up. Everything she'd lost that day. Her youth, innocence, her ties to the past and her lover; her future, too, with him, with a family they created together; more than anything, her ability and willingness to look forward to and hope for…anything. That was gone, that day. So there was no reason to keep fighting, to keep whole, if there was nothing good coming, and there wasn't. "I know how you feel," I said, moving closer. I was aware of the fact that I wanted her, that I knew I was about to try to seduce her. But I wasn't lying. I wasn't saying what I thought she wanted to hear. I really did know exactly how she felt, and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to sleep with someone because I wanted to be close to them, to love them and be loved. Not to forget or get off or feel powerful. I wanted to become part of her and see if we could ease both our pain by sharing it. I kissed her freckled shoulder. She leaned over me so that when I raised my head, her lips were right before mine. We kissed.

Fucking on crash n' burn is euphoric and exciting. With someone you genuinely love, it's even better. I'd been running from and forcing back and denying any emotions that made me feel to close to anyone since Tarvin and my first six months on Corellia, and how that had ended. I didn't want to let anyone in. I didn't want to be weak. I would stand alone. But the spice I was on-different from my usual ixetal and whiskey-made me not worry about that. Instead, I thought of Camie's bright smile, her fragile and beautiful soul, and the fact that suddenly and at last I was nowhere near as alone as I had been. With her legs wrapped around my hips, our pale, similar Arkansian eyes locked as we came, I felt better than I had in years. We kissed deeply in the afterglow, holding each other calmly in the quiet, cool Mos Eisley predawn. I felt actually safe. I felt actually relaxed. She understood me-in so many ways no one else ever would. How many people really could? We were so much the same, and we'd found each other after all these years, just when we'd needed each other so badly.

I felt like I was home.

"I missed you," she said, just as I had been drifting off.

I'd missed her since Fixer had happened, and I said so.

"I hurt you."

I nodded.

"I'm sorry."

"You're here now," I returned, holding her closer, kissing her neck.

And I thought about our teens and preteens, the years before Biggs and Fixer and Tank and the other older Anchorhead kids, back when we'd rarely strayed from our cluster of homesteads. I remembered Camie, bright and cheerful and full of life, giggling as we played in my courtyard, the suns glinting off youthful blonde streaks in her messy hair. What if I hadn't lost that girl when we'd found Toshe Station, her falling in love with a much older boy and turning into someone I didn't recognize? I don't know if I'd ever have become so close to Biggs, my own older boy. Maybe I wouldn't have learned to fly, without Biggs' influence. I might have never gotten involved with the Alliance. Maybe I'd have married this girl, given her the baby she'd been robbed of, raised him and others on her father's old farm after he died. Maybe we'd have been happy. Maybe I'd have been a little bored, but at least I'd have been happy. And Camie wouldn't be entertaining cantina patrons between bumps of powder and barely holding back tears at the memories.

But it was too late for any of that.

"I would have stayed for you," I said. I meant it when I said it. But I suppose I'm not sure if it was true.

"What about the Academy? The Alliance?"

"It was all bantha shit-"

"You didn't think so, then. It was everything to you."

"I wouldn't have been so eager to leave if I'd had a reason to stay."

"Are you trying to get me to admit I should have been with you instead of Fixer? I think that's pretty obvious at this point."

"Yeah," I sighed. "But you didn't think so, then."

"…Yes, I did."

I opened my eyes and looked at her in alarm as the first light started to filter in the windows.

"I was too stubborn to admit I'd been wrong, and then I…I was scared to leave him. Scared he wouldn't let me. But I'm not stupid, Luke. He was abusive. You were gentle. You knew the real me. I'm sorry…."

"No…no, I should have done more to get you out. I saw the way he treated you and…I dunno. I guess I thought…you wanted things to stay that way."

She shook her head.

"Camie…." I sighed. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

I kissed her forehead, her eyes, her lips. She was bringing something out in me, my a soft sincerity I'd thought I'd lost. We made love again, slowly, holding each other very tightly, kissing through our mutual climax and finally falling asleep when the daylight reached full brightness and I could hear the traffic going past in the sandy streets.

We woke up hours later. I was a little hungover, dehydrated, my head pounding as I opened my eyes. The burn from the drug, I knew, was probably there, but I wouldn't really notice until it was gone. Now, I was mostly just tired, hazy, in need of water.

I moved a few inches, intending to get up and find something to drink, but I felt the soft body against mine and stopped.

As the past night came flooding back, I felt both excited and uneasy. Camie and I could be very good for each other. We could help each other overcome our own depression with regained love and mutual support and understanding. But I'd purposely sabotaged all the fledgling relationships I'd had since Leia, and chances were I'd probably ruin anything with Camie, too, either because I got scared, lost control, or did something hurtful or stupid, whether on purpose or no.

I sighed. Why was I already bracing for impact? I should have been happy.

Part of my worry was that with both of us using, we'd probably just enable each other.

Wait. I could have a beautiful girlfriend who I'd grown up with, didn't need to keep anything from, and could get high all I wanted with.

Fuck it. That sounded amazing.

As I held her to me, I decided I wasn't going anywhere for a very long time.

I ventured out and got some breakfast and a big bottle of water, refusing to use any of Camie's money, insisting that I could pay for it with my modest pension. I knew where she got her money, and, though I wasn't going to try to stop her, I also wasn't about to let her spend it on me. While I was out, I managed to use some illicit investigation skills I'd developed in Coronet to get ahold of some ixetal sticks for tonight, for me. Crash n' burn was nice, but lethargic oblivion was more my style. Crash n' burn took too much energy and too long to wear off all the way.

I hid the sticks from Camie. I wasn't really sure why. Maybe I was worried she was enough of a mess to want to start on them right away. Maybe I was embarrassed that poor little Luke Skywalker had become too comfortable with one of the harder drugs in the Galaxy.

When I got back, Camie was sitting naked at the glass table, cutting lines. I became both indignant with worry and excited at the prospect of getting high again already. "Camie-" I began.

She smiled up at me, and this time she was sober enough that it almost hit her eyes. "Where'd you go?"

"Got breakfast, remember? You won't be able to eat if you do those lines first." I felt hypocritical, because I usually preferred drugs to food. But she was so thin, and I was feeling protective.

She reconsidered the powder as I uncovered the fried meat and tubers in their plastic boxes, expertly sweeping the spice back into the little case she always carried, leaving no trace of it on the glass. Standing, she searched for her dress, but I caught her in my arms, keeping her away from the object she reached for and kissing her playfully. She smiled. She looked more relaxed. "I didn't know if…if we just did it because we were high, or-"

"Of course not. I mean, I didn't."

"Me, neither."

I kissed her again.

"It's just that," she continued, her forehead pressed to mine, "You have every right to be mad at me."

"Camie, it was a long time ago."

"But we were close even longer ago. We can't just pick up where we left off when I met Fixer."

I smirked. "Is drug-fueled sex where we left off? We barely even kissed, before."

"I don't want this to just be sex."

"It's not!" I insisted, immediately recoiling internally at my eagerness to be in a relationship. I'd thought I'd wanted the opposite. I'd resolved, in fact, that I was incapable of making anyone-including myself-anything but miserable, and until I sorted myself out, which I doubted I ever would, I had no business trying to have partners, lovers, or even close friends. Sex was okay, as long as that's all it was. _She doesn't count_, I told myself, because this was something I'd wanted since I was a child. If I passed up this opportunity, I'd always regret it, and I had enough regrets. We could take care of each other. We might help each other, cheer each other up. Or at least distract each other for awhile. We wouldn't have to be alone. "Camie, I came back to see if I could find a part of myself that I'd lost. You're…part of that. I think about you a lot."

I felt better after I ate and showered-with Camie, which must have helped, too-and at sunset, she and I finally left the hotel hand-in-hand and walked through the market. I'd managed to keep her sober-ish, give or take a couple lines, all day, but after dark, we ended up at a cantina full of locals and music. We got drunk and held each other while we watched the band. She tried to get me to dance, but it take a lot more than a slow whiskey drunk for me to dance. It was beautiful, though. I felt so relaxed and celebratory, both safe from and free of the darkness that had been part of my life since Bespin. Eventually, inevitably, the spice came out, and we did bumps off a spoon handle in a dark corner of the bar, staying there to kiss.

It was one of the best Leia-less days of my life. It was the happiest I'd been in years. I decided to make sure all of mine and Camie's days were like this, and that there would be a lot of them.

I think the real mistake was the ixetal, though who knows what would have ruined it otherwise? It would have been something, eventually. Camie Marstrap and I were both ticking bombs: depressed, lost, and chaotic, flying off the emotional handle for little or no reason, and using every little disruption or occasion as an excuse to self-destruct. It was always only a matter of time.

When I was drunk and high enough that I stopped caring about consequences, I took out the sticks. Came furrowed her brow in alarm. "Ixi-sticks?"

"Yeah."

"Luke, those are really bad-"

"They're not any worse than crash n' burn-"

"But they're harder to get off of. The withdrawal is bad."

"I know," I murmured. "I guess I don't like uppers as much as you do. I'd rather be…you know. Calmed down. Ixetal turns off the worry."

"Crash n' burn calms me down."

"It makes you feel like everything's good," I said. "It's different. It's a confidence boost. The sticks turn off the part of your brain that even tries to worry about things."

"At first," she said.

"Enough," I insisted. I wasn't sure why she was so obviously bothered by the sticks but seemed to find no problems with her own drug use. The hypocrisy and double-standards of some spicers annoyed me.

I could smell smoke in the cantina already, so I lit a stick without trying to hide it, sitting beside Camie at a booth, tumblers of whiskey before each of us. The rush came after just a couple drags, and I sat back, letting it take me over, handing the lit stick to Camie without asking if she wanted some.

Ixetal and crash n' burn together is weird. Good, but very strange. It's a little psychedelic, a little hallucinogenic. There are visuals, tracers after movement, intense detail that doesn't exist in reality dancing on surfaces, halos around light sources. Physically, it's a more intense rush and a happier, more confident afterglow. Less relaxing, somewhat overwhelming, kind of exhausting, but it had the memory blanking effect of the sticks and the confidence boost of the powder. It was too much, really, but good once in a while. Sometimes really good.

After I came out of the rush, I sat up and looked at Camie. She had managed to flick off the ember of the stick before succumbing to her own rush. She was obviously still in it, staring at the table, barely noticing when I said her name. So I just held her hand and waited, and felt amazing.

When we got home, we did a few more lines, then made love again.

The thing is, we had already developed a pattern. It was fun, and comforting, and predictable, and lacked substance beyond our genuine mutual affection. We didn't do anything else besides fulfill what our bodies needed to stay numb and comfortable. We slept, we ate-albeit little-we had sex, we drank and got spiced, we went out when we felt like it. That was it.

No amount of love and good intentions could keep something like that from falling apart.


	18. Mos Espa

Author's note: I just wanted to step in here to tell you kids that you can follow me on tumblr! Hurray! My url is another-skywalker. I'm on all the time and super into talking.

* * *

"So then what happened?"

"That's all."

"What d'you mean, 'that's all?'"

I shrug in the driver's seat.

Han, lounging in the passenger's seat, which he's moved back far enough to put his boots up on the console, furrows his brow at me. "So you two just got high for six months, then you dumped her on the Darklighters?"

I sigh.

"See—you're leavin' something out. You're doin' that thing where you clench your jaw real tight, and I can tell there's somethin' you don't want to say."

I don't know whether to feel honored that he pays enough attention to me to notice little things like that, or to feel shaken by the fact that he doesn't even need the Force to read my mind—he just needs to watch me. I guess he needed to learn to notice stuff like that to be a good card player. I bite my lip, wondering how much I should say. "Camie got hooked on the ixetal-crash n' burn combination. I don't know the chemistry of it, but I guess your body does something to the two when they're both in your system, and they turn into a new chemical. I don't know why, but I never really liked crash n' burn as much as her, and eventually I mostly stayed away from it. I don't know how to explain the difference between her addiction and mine, but…I dunno, Han. She got…worse and worse. And I was trying to hold her together and…I just couldn't. I wasn't well enough to take care of anyone—I was lucky I could even take care of myself."

"You're still not tellin' me what happened."

"I don't even know how to explain it." I shift nervously. "You care if I smoke in here?"

"Course not. Gimme one."

I dig a stick out of my pocket and light it, knowing the air conditioning will filter the smoke out as quickly as I can produce it, and hand the box and lighter to Han. "She got…irrational."

"Yeah?"

I hate this. I hate myself for saying this. I hate myself more for it having happened. "She would talk all the time about how she was going to get clean and start a family, and she made it pretty clear that she intended to do it with me. But she kept using more and more, and I couldn't get her to eat—"

"Sounds familiar."

"Yeah, but—I wasn't that bad, yet. I didn't think I would ever get that bad. I had to take her to the clinic three times, all in the last two months I was here. And she chose not to hear me when I told her that I didn't want more kids."

"Were you on meds?"

"No…."

He turns and looks at me and waits.

I sigh again. "I can't have kids anymore. I never told her."

"Since when?"

"Second Death Star. I was injured. I shoot blanks." I never tell people that. I don't know why. I don't even think about it.

"Injured how?"

He's asking too many questions, and I can feel my anxiety turning into anger. No. Not that. I'm not doing that anymore. I think about the way I used to act before he came back into my life—hostile to everyone—and how easily angered I was until I got clean, until I finished detox, really. The times I lashed out at Han with almost no provocation. Yelling matches, sometimes. He wasn't about to let me have my way, not when I was like that. And now that I've come so far, I can't even imagine being that aggressive towards him. He's like my brother. My best friend. He's out here in the middle of fucking nowhere with me for reasons he doesn't understand and it's because our bond means so much to him, he's willing to trust me to work this out in my own way. I take a deep breath. He's trying to help. He loves me.

No more secrets.

"Radiation. Something the Emperor did to me. Either trying to kill me or break my will—I think he would have been happy either way. I was sick for a couple weeks."

Han's eyes, when I glance briefly over into them, are soft and intense, full of the awareness that I'd spoken aloud something about the day I killed my father, for the first time within his hearing. "But it didn't work. You're here now."

I nod, remembering coming-to, and hearing the silence filled with Vader's labored breathing, and the Emperor completely gone. "I survived." I shrug. "I don't even mind being sterile. I'm glad, actually—it was one less thing to worry about, and I _would_ have worried about it. The last thing I wanted was to make things harder for any of the girls I was with—I would never have forgiven myself for that." I pause, then urge myself on. "And there were a lot of them. And none of them were in too much better of a place than Camie."

"So it was just really dysfunctional, or what? You and Camie."

I hesitate again. "I was really bad to her, Han. Not at first, but…I lied to her all the time. I never cheated on her, that's not what I mean. I would lie for no reason, just to see what she would do. I don't even know why—I didn't know then, either. It gave me a rush." My fingers tremble as I take a drag of the stick, then set my hand back on the controls. "The thing is, she was already barely hanging on emotionally and mentally. I think I kinda pushed her the little bit she needed to turn into a complete wreck. I don't know. I think…I felt powerless in my life, and I felt better by trying to manipulate those around me, or something. It was fun when it worked for short periods. When it kept working for too long, I'd scare myself and try to get out of the situation as quickly as possible." I shake my head. "When I think about that…I wonder, 'Who was that?'—because it wasn't me.' In some ways I don't feel like I'm recovered at all, but in others…to fuck with someone on purpose…." I pause, smoking thoughtfully. "That was the dark side, Han."

"You were sick, kid. More ways than one."

Maybe I'm starting to accept that it was more than just trauma and spice. What did the doctor who gave me the pills call it? Personality disorder…. "I know."

"So you left her?"

"She would have done anything I said at that point. She _did_ do anything I said. It was…it was so fucked up. That's a judgment of _me_, not her. I didn't know what else to do. All I knew was _I_ got her hooked on ixetal, and _I _was the one fucking with her head, and I also knew that I probably used more than I would if I wasn't in a relationship with an addict, so…I thought it would be better for both of us. But I didn't really tell her that. I just left." When he doesn't say anything, I ask, my voice strained—I almost feel like I'm going to cry—I say, "Do you think I should look for her?"

"I dunno. Do you?"

"I think I owe it to her. But I don't want to see her." There's a part of me that wants to find her just to make sure she's okay, but I feel like the part that's afraid to face my own mistakes might be the one that wins out.

"Would she want to see you?"

That's just the thing. I think she still would, and that makes me feel even worse about myself.

* * *

We get to Mos Espa just barely after nightfall, find a room at a hotel, and as I slowly pick at the dinner we had sent up, Han asks me if I want to try to do any reconnaissance tonight, or wait until morning. "I mean, we'd be limited to the cantinas," he says, his eyes twinkling, "But that's where tongues're loosest, anyway."

I turn it over in my mind several times, debating how I feel. "I'm gonna want to drink if I'm around a bunch of drunk people—"

"Thought it didn't bother you if people drink around you."

"It doesn't when you have a couple, or Leia has a glass of wine, or I'm at some stupid official function or quiet party where people are drinking politely. I mean _drunk_ people." Shaking my head, I push my barely-touched food aside, giving up. "This is stressful enough as it is."

Han finishes his food and looks at mine, the twinkle leaving his eye, but when he meets my gaze, his is steady, strong, intense. "You're doin' _real_ well. Really."

He can see me getting anxious. I haven't taken any of my pills since this morning. I feel on the verge of an anxiety attack. "I wish I could just have two drinks like a normal person. And I _really _wish it wasn't something I worried about so much."

He nods sadly. "You know…before I knew you like this…I used to think maybe I had a drinkin' problem. I know I drank too much, but there's somethin' different about the way you drink and the way I do—or the way I did, I guess."

"You can stop."

"Yeah…."

"But…I don't know why. I don't know why you can and I can't. I wish I did."

"What d'you think would happen? If you had a couple and tried to stop after that?"

"I did that, that night on the _Falcon_ when I broke into your private stash. Remember?"

"You really didn't drink that much that night, did you?"

"No."

He weighs me with his eyes for a long moment. "Why was that different? Howcome that night you could stop?"

I shake my head again.

Han sighs and leans back in his chair. "I can go run recon by my lonesome—see what I can track down on your grandma. It'd be fun, I could even get a couple hands of sabacc in."

"You don't mind?"

"Kid, it'd be a lot less weird me lyin' low and askin' questions without you hangin' on my arm all night. Worst case scenario, we don't find anything out tonight and have to start again tomorrow morning."

I smile a little. "You know, you can just say so if you want to go out."

"That's just a little added benefit. Hey, what's this Camie look like? You got a holo?"

"I don't own a single thing I owned back then. Not one." Getting rid of objects regularly as I moved around during those seven years helped me feel distance from my past. I was as systematic about it as I was capable of. "She's my age, her hair is…kinda like yours. Medium brown, no red or gold in it. Lots of freckles. Blue eyes. Between Leia's height and mine. Last I saw her, she weighed about forty-eight kilos. If that."

He nods. "She could be workin' in one of the cantinas here—"

I shrug. "Maybe." But I finish the thought in my head: _Maybe. But I don't think she's well enough to hold down a job, even one like that._

"What's her last name?"

"Marstrap."

"Want me to tell her you're here if I track her down?"

I hesitate, but shake my head.

Han leaves. I take two pills and pick at my dinner some more, listening to the street below. I remember the night I first came back to Tatooine that time, the night I first slept with Camie, how I started off in my hotel room, feeling lonely and depressed, disconnected from the Core and Tatooine, from my past, present, and future, and how I'd wanted a connection with someone, and there she was. Like magic. I smile to myself. Obi-Wan told me there were no coincidences. Maybe I'd subconsciously, purposely, been looking for her. Maybe the Force brought me to her.

It could do that again, tonight.

I try to meditate to sense her presence, but I give up quickly. I don't know how to do things like that on purpose at long distances, anymore—and I was never great at sensing people who aren't Force sensitive themselves, except Han for whatever reason. I'm too anxious tonight, anyway. How did I do it, last time? I went through a list of cantinas in my head until one felt right. But I don't know Mos Espa. Even if I did, would that method work if I was doing it with Camie clearly in mind? Or does that only work subconsciously?

I need a drink.

I can sense Han, still, even though he's a few blocks away. Maybe I'll go join him after all. I wonder what he would do if I had a drink. What if I really _can_ have two and stop now? My therapist says I'll never be able to do that, but how does she know? The medic who cleared me for Rogue Squadron told me that my brain might just get better on its own, as far as depression goes. Why not, then, could I one day be able to drink like a normal person? If I'm really doing so much better, then….

Besides, I'm not going to do _anything _helpful sitting around in this hotel room being anxious.

* * *

I find Han in some decadent yet run-down, divey cantina called the Blue Brubb. Obviously designed by and for Hutts and their friends. Actually, I think I remember hearing that a good half of this town used to be owned by Jabba. I actually don't know the details on that—I know Jabba got taken out by another gangster, and then pretty shortly after the New Republic stepped in and liberated the Hutt-held parts of Tatooine. I probably wouldn't even have noticed that if it hadn't affected spice availability. I wonder, with a sudden fearful pang in my heart, what would have happened if Han had made it to Jabba when he was captured and frozen, if I ever would have seen him again. Well, Jabba's gone now. So it doesn't matter.

I push between two beings and into a clear spot next to the bar next to Han, who turns and smiles at me with very little surprise in his face or his aura. "Get bored?"

I shake my head. "I just talked myself out of whatever it was I'd decided to be anxious about."

"See," he says, sipping a whiskey, "I told you you were gettin' better."

I nod thoughtfully, then hesitate a moment, gathering my nerve, before I say, "Han…will you trust me on something?"

"What?"

"I want to see if I can stop at two."

His smile fades. "Kid—"

"I need to know."

"You start drinkin', you might end up—"

"What? Buying spice? Going on a bender? I won't. You'll keep an eye on me. It's just an experiment."

He locks eyes with me, and as hesitant as he is, I can sense through the intensity and solidity of our bond that he does trust me, and that he'll catch me if I fall. He doesn't like it, but I need to try this, and he knows he needs to give me the freedom to explore this for myself. "You _sure_?"

"Yeah."

"I ain't gonna stop you."

I light a soft sick, and when the bartender turns towards me I have no misgivings or moment of apprehension. I automatically order the same whiskey I always used to order. I take the a sip, and it tastes bright and welcoming—"liquid sunshine," I've heard people call it. "You find anything out?" I ask carefully, deciding that the best way to interact with this whiskey is not to focus too much on it.

"Yeah."

Somehow, I hadn't expected something so soon.

"Barback knows your girlfriend."

The bartender—human, middle-aged guy, seems tough but friendly—has been listening to us and leans forward. "You're that guy that ran out on her, aren't you?" he asks, but he just sounds curious.

I feel the urge to revert to my Treasure Ship Row or Coruscant underworld persona suddenly, but I stop myself from telling him to fuck off, both because I want to know what he has to say, and because I don't want to be that person anymore. "Where is she?" I ask.

"Well, she's not allowed in here anymore," he says, pouring an ale for another customer. "It's not that I don't like her, she's a nice girl, it's just it's bad for the whole bar if I serve people who are already fucked up. And she's always fucked up. Never really has money, either."

"But she's in town?"

"I think it's only been maybe a week since I saw her. She used to come here a lot until I had to put my foot down. I'd try the back room at the Dust Bowl."

"Think they still let her in?"

"Back room is a lotus lounge. They love people like her."

My blood runs cold, and I think of Camie like I saw her so many times, so high she could barely move, or passed out on our bed as the suns warmed her through the big window of her tiny apartment. I used to sit on the floor and nurse a bottle and watch her and worry. I didn't know what to do. There was nothing to do. I was almost as bad as she was. "Thanks," I say, my voice weary even to my own ears. I put a couple chips on the bar, then I pour the rest of my whiskey into Han's glass. "I can't," I say quietly. "You drink it."

He doesn't say anything about the whiskey. "You wanna go see if she's there?"

I nod. "If she is—"

"Yeah?"

"Let's take her with us."


	19. Light

_Author's note: Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I started second-guessing some weird choices I was making, but I think I remember again why I was making them, and I swear anything that seems like a side-track is actually contributing to the main plot of the story. In life there are no accidents—everything is a lesson to further one on his karmic journey. That's something Luke is realizing, slowly, as his story goes on._

_Also my grandfather passed last week, and I'm mourning him, which made for an even longer delay. But I think even loss is beautiful—and if you don't have experiences, what are you even supposed to write about?_

* * *

Four and a half years ago, Mos Eisley….

She wasn't Leia.

I inhaled lotus steam deeply from the Huttese water pipe and watched her, lying half aware on a pile of velvet pillows, her painfully thin midriff, bare between a barely there tan suede top and her long burgundy linen skirt, rising and falling slowly. A leather chord bound her hair into a messy braid; she was wearing a big silver necklace she'd probably gotten from a client who fell a little too hard for her, but that wasn't something I wanted to know about. Her eyes didn't look blue in the low light, but they were big and glassy and lovely in an otherworldly way, even though I knew the reason they were so magical was because she had enough lotus in her system to kill a baby rancor.

She wasn't Leia, not at all. And she never would be.

She sat up, moving like a drunk feline, staggering and clumsy yet somehow fluid and seductive, effortless and lethargic, and moved closer to me, lying between me and the water pipe, purring, "Wormie…."

"Don't call me that," I reminded her for the thousandth time, not nearly as high as she was, and not amused.

She laughed, looking up at me as I sat above her, leaning on one elbow. "What're you thinking about?"

I'd never have admitted to thinking about Leia. Never. "Nothing."

Camie rubbed against me sensually. I barely resisted a moment before I set down the mouthpiece of the pipe on its stand, and put my arms around her, kissing her deeply. She wrapped her legs around me and started unfastening my tunic, but in a few minutes, I gently pushed her away. Her eyes like wet crystal searched me anxiously. "What's wrong?"

I didn't even know. This was just all wrong. Had I seen her entirely sober since I'd come home? Had I gone more than a day without getting spiced? If we loved each other, why were we just as miserable as when we found each other?

* * *

Present day, Mos Espa….

"You ever do lotus?" Han asks as we near the Dust Bowl.

I swallow the lump in my throat and nod, then wryly ask, "You?"

"Yeah."

That surprises me—I'd expected him to say no, but then, I'd always been aware of a handful of teenage years of Han's, between running away from the orphanage and getting accepted to Cardia, that he'd gotten into some fairly unsavory company. Still, lotus is pretty hard spice. Mind-numbing, body-numbing, oblivion-inducing, almost instantly addictive. Heavier than ixetal. Harder to get. Expensive, rare, drug of choice of Hutt crime lords. But I don't comment. "Camie and I used to go it together," I say. "But I stopped."

"'Cause you were worried about her," Han supplies, certain.

I nod again, then reluctantly say, "Killing myself is one thing."

"And lettin' the girl you love do the same in front of you's somethin' else."

The panic driving me to the Dust Bowl is so different from the anxiety I usually feel. There's no desire to hide, no need to reach for my imaginary spice box or my real pills, no refusal to face my fear. I _need _to face this, I need to see her, to see if she's okay, to—

To save her.

That thought, when I have it, when I distill my urgency down and analyze it and realize it feels just like realizing that the girl from the hologram message is here and they're going to execute her and—and I have to save her—that thought brings the other kind of panic, the "I need a drink" panic, the denial, the fighting against myself, the desire to run in the other direction. I don't want to be a hero. I never was one. If one more person ever looks at me with gratitude in their eyes, I swear—

"What?"

"Nothing," I insist, realizing that Han had noticed my step slowing down. "Nothing, I just—I don't think I should go in there. This is already hard for me, and if I breathe in any of the smoke, I—"

"I'll go see if she's in there," he says, clearly not buying my excuse, "But if she is, you think she's gonna let me take her home?"

I almost make a heartless joke about how she will if he pays her, but it's not funny, in fact it makes me sick, so I don't say it aloud. "She's in there," I say, looking past the adobe wall. "And she's so high she won't care."

Han looks at the Dust Bowl and then back to me. "You can feel all that?"

My hesitant return to the occasional use of my abilities has surprised me, too, but I'm using it so sparingly and cautiously that I'm not worried. Besides, when I'm sober, the Force seems to use me as much as I use it. "I think she's…passed out? Maybe not. Either way, she won't be able to put up a fight. Han, just…pay her bill, say you're her brother or something. Get her out of there."

He shakes his head. "Come in with me."

Though I have a bad feeling about it, the anxiety is dying down again with proximity, and all I know is I need to get her somewhere safe. I don't say anything, just plunge into the doorway, down the two flights of stairs, and into the low light and damp smoke of the den.

_The smoke._

You wouldn't even have to buy a pipe to get high in here, the air is so thick with it. I wouldn't, anyway, since I have no tolerance anymore. I can't be in here—I have to hurry. A twi'lek waiter greets us and starts to ask us how many pipes we'll need, one or two, but I stop him. "Me stuta un human cheeka," I say in my deplorable Huttese.

"Chik youngee?" he asks in return, and I think he's asking me if I _want_ a dancing girl, not if the girl is a dancing girl, so I start to correct him, but then he indicates a thin and pale brunette wearing a dancer's costume, passed out on a low couch, her hand still holding the mouthpiece of her water pipe. "Do pateesa? Weeteebah puffee?" _Your friend? Do you want to smoke together?_

"No…uh…no puffee. Me koose bunky dunko." _I'm taking her home._

"Uba wamma che lotus?" _Will you pay for the lotus?_

"Kava?"

He names an absurdly high sum and I pay it in credit chips—we haven't been using electronic payments since leaving home, so that we'll be harder to trace, but I've always mainly dealt in cash, so it's no annoyance to me. I assume the amount is either what Camie has run up on her tab across days or weeks, or that he figures we'll pay anything for the privilege of taking her out of there. It doesn't matter to me either way. It's just money. Trying to take shallow breaths, I cross the room to Camie, who looks even more frail and exhausted than I remember her, crouch at her side, and push her hair away from her face. When I try to take the mouthpiece from her hand, she stirs and makes a small noise of protest. "Neechu bolla, schutta," she grumbles, eyes closed.

"Camie," I say softly, ignoring the insult.

"No," she says, same tone.

"Camie, it's Luke…."

"Luke…?" She smiles faintly, and the smile grows as she opens her eyes, the blue of her irises invisible around her swollen pupils, the whites bloodshot, the lashes falling languidly back over them as soon as she sees what she needed to see. "Luke."

She's had too much, much too much. No fear, just an overwhelming need to protect her helps me lift her in my arms and cradle her against me and carry her out of the den. The waiter tells us to have a good night, and much bigger Han offers to carry her for me, but I refuse. I can do this. This is my burden, not his.

* * *

"You sure we shouldn't take her to a clinic?" Han asks as I watch Camie sleep in our bed back at the hotel. "She's out cold."

"She'll sleep it off." I don't want her in a clinic, I want her where I can watch her.

"And then what?"

I sigh heavily. I don't want to think about tomorrow, about the withdrawal that's going to begin to wrack her body and mind if she doesn't get a fix. And I don't want to think about whether I'm going to hold her down and make her fight it, or if I'm going to let her get high to keep that from happening. "I don't know."

"I'm startin' to sense a theme, here."

Maybe I never have actual plans because everything always seems to change so fast that plans come up fairly useless.

Han leans casually on a couch against the wall, his brown canvas Tatooine-appropriate boots off, his ankles on one armrest, smoking a stick. His eyes are deep and soft as he watches me watch Camie, and when I catch him looking at me that way, he seems a little embarrassed. With a faint smile, he says, "See how it feels?"

It takes me a second to understand, but when I do, my throat clenches and my heart pounds. "I'm sorry," I say softly.

"I keep thinkin' 'bout the only time I actually saw you smoke ixetal. That morning after I slept on your couch, remember?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno. That did somethin' to me. Freaked me out." He shakes his head and puts out his stick. "Think that was when I realized I didn't care if things were weird between me an' you. I didn't care if it was weird that we were friends, since we married the same girl, or if I was supposed to be mad at you or somethin' since you took off like that, or if you were supposed to be mad at me for the Leia thing. None of that ever mattered, and that's when I got that. I knew when I saw you _needin_'—not just wantin', like needin' like your life depended on it—to get high first thing in the morning, that I was gonna fight like hell to get you better."

My heart swells with love, and I realize that this feeling is something I wasn't really capable of a year ago. Just love, without fear or lust or possessiveness attached to it. I don't know if Han knows what an immense gift he's given me by sharing thoughts like that with me. Someday I have to learn to reciprocate. If I could reciprocate, I would tell him how much I love him, how his friendship keeps me sane, how I didn't even know I wanted to get better until I knew he wanted me to. That I thought I was dead inside until he showed me he still believed in me. I got better for the boys and Leia. I was able to get better because of Han. "I thought at the time that you were mad."

"I _was_ mad—'cause I was scared. 'Cause I knew if you kept going like that you didn't have a lot a years left in you."

I look at Camie. You can still tell she's beautiful, though you have to look past the ashy color of her skin, the limpness of her hair, the dark circles under her eyes, her sunken cheeks, her many bruises. She's only thirty, and her body, if she weren't so thin, would be incredible, but the dusty purple silk gauze straps that wrap around her legs and torso have little suggestive power teasingly hiding skin and bones. "Did I look like that?" I ask softly.

He shrugs.

"How'd you know I _could_ get better?" I ask, frustrated and scared of tomorrow. "How did you know I wanted to? I didn't even know that, yet. I'd thought my life was over for years."

"'Cause I could still see you. You'd do things, sometimes, and this—this beautiful, annoying, farm boy light would come back into your eyes. Usually when you were playin' with the kids, but sometimes when I made you laugh, sometimes when you…when you looked at Leia. Same light you always used to have when you were a kid, same thing that kept you fightin' the Empire when we thought we were losin'—it was still there; it was even there, underneath, when you were spiced out of your damn mind."

_Light?_ "I thought…." I fumble anxiously for words. I really want to try to explain this to him, if I can. "I thought that…that if I let myself sober up…that I'd be like _him._"

"Like your father." It's not a question, and he seems to not be too confused by the suggestion, but not to really buy it, either.

"I guess I thought I couldn't do anything too bad if I was fucked up all the time. Not to anyone else, anyway."

"All your darkness is pointed at yourself, kid. Always was."

"No." I shake my head. I still can't bring myself to take a pill in front of Han, so I light a soft stick. "No, not always. Didn't Leia ever tell you…the way I broke up with her?"

He shakes his head. His face is unreadable, but I sense a twinge of apprehension from him. Their marriage may not have worked, but he's still very protective of her. She's still his daughter's mother, and one of the important loves of his life.

"I tried to…to be as vicious to her as I could. I wanted her to hurt as much as I did, and I wanted her to hate me so that it would really be over. I thought it would give us distance. It didn't, but…the things I said to her Han, the way I said them…." I rub a tear from my eye in frustration. "I was embracing what I thought was my natural, hereditary ability to…to manipulate people. To cause them pain to make them act the way I wanted them to do. I did it to Camie, too; I did it to Tarvin—" Another tear, I note angrily, wiping it off with my sleeve. Han's seen me cry dozens of times, but I still hate losing control, even if it's just around him. "How could there be a 'light?'"

"You can have both."

For a moment, that sounds like brilliance, like a huge revelation, like something in my brain suddenly clicks into place, making everything else make so much more sense. But then I laugh ironically and take a drag of my stick. "That's convenient," I say, fully aware that I've gone into defensive mode, that I've put up my walls to him again.

"Whatd'ya mean?"

"You can't just dismiss something evil in a person by saying that they have goodness, too, and acting like that makes everything okay—"

"It don't make everything okay," he sits up and looks at me the way he looks at the boys when they're in trouble, his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees. "It just makes it possible for things to get better, is all. And I never fucking dismissed your worse qualities, Luke—I told you you could fight them. I know they're there. I know they're real. I know you're smart enough to know what they are, and I know you're strong enough to get over them and—I can't believe I'm sayin' somethin' this hokey-soundin', but I knew once you did that light was gonna shine a lot brighter."

"As if the light is who I really am." I say it like a challenge.

"It's who you are when you're not hidin' from yourself, yeah."

We sound like we're fighting. I _feel_ like we're fighting. What are we fighting about?

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I refuse to fight with Han. And these walls have to come back down immediately. This is not how I want to act. "I'm…I'm sorry I got all…defensive."

"Been a long day," he says dryly, but he's clearly not mad at me. He rises and comes to sit on the bed beside me, holding me in his arms for a second. "I don't mind arguin' with you if it helps you work stuff out."

"I don't know what helps."

He kisses the top of my head. It's kind of weird, but I love it when he does that. It's so sweet, so protective. Makes me feel safe. He stands. "I'll sleep on the couch. You should be next to her when she wakes up."

"I guess…." I grumble. I still don't know what it's going to be like between us when she's actually conscious. She has every right to hate me.

What am I doing, anyway? I broke out of jail to find a way to clear my name, and here I am trying to save my spice addict ex-girlfriend who probably isn't even going to be happy to see me when she wakes up.

Not that my life has ever made sense. At all.

Han doesn't seem to have much trouble sleeping on the little couch, but I lay awake most of the night, wondering what Leia and the boys are doing, wondering how mad at me she is, and trying to decide what I'm supposed to do in the morning.


End file.
